If you’ve worked in healthcare at all in the last 5 years you know one of the biggest challenges is recruiting and retaining talented healthcare employees.
Whether it’s the shortage of qualified professionals, the impact of Covid, or the aging workforce, it’s clear that individuals are less attracted to healthcare jobs, especially the younger generations. While it is important to understand what is driving these larger trends, it is also just as important to figure out what you can do on a more personal level to recruit and retain employees in this current environment. At the end of the day, your organization’s success and your patients’ care is on the line.
So how do you do that – how do you beat the scary statistics and recruit enough qualified, compassionate, and driven employees? Well, insightful marketing and communication efforts are powerful tools that can help you to tackle this critical challenge. Let’s get into some helpful tips!
Healthcare Marketing Messaging
Want to know the secret for success? You must understand what drives potential employees’ decisions and what makes them consider different healthcare systems. Then, weave that knowledge into all of your messaging. Read that again, it really is that important.
Prospective employees may be asking “What is the hospital’s reputation when it comes to patient care and safety? How are employees treated, what are the benefits, is there training and advancement opportunities? What is the quality of the physical facilities and how technologicaly advanced is the system?”
If you work in healthcare, you might already know the aspects above are important, but ask yourself if you’ve really taken the time to uncover which decisions are the most important for your audiences. Think about what nurses and physicians care most about versus technicians and admin staff. Think about what might deter prospects from your system and what are the positives that outweigh these potential challenges so that you can influence their decision-making processes.
Healthcare Marketing Tactics
Some of this might be familiar to you already, but here’s a little refresher – a mix of different tactics is crucial! Not only because of the different channels candidates may be on, but also because this allows you to attract different audiences who are in different stages of the decision-making process.
At the top of the recruitment decision-making funnel, we have awareness. Here candidates need to find out about your organization. These marketing tactics can have a larger audience and be a little broader to increase overall brand awareness. Tactics may include broad-reach advertising, press releases, paid search, organic and paid social, recruitment landing pages, and career events.
Next, we have consideration. Potential employees may know about your organization but they are likely considering multiple employers. This is where recruitment marketing efforts can become more targeted and tactics may include remarketing campaigns, sponsored job posts, and e-blasts.
If a candidate has gotten to the interest stage, it means they are engaged and want to learn more. Planning networking events, hosting Q&As, and sharing employee testimonial videos can make a huge impact on the individuals in this phase.
Once you get into the final stages of the hiring decision-making funnel – applying, interviewing, and hiring– some of the responsibility shifts to teams outside of marketing. However, marketing plays an important role in ensuring the website allows candidates to easily submit their applications and onboarding/internal materials are created for new hires. Make sure to train those other internal staff members so they can consistently reinforce your message strategy as they work to make the hire.
With an understanding of the unique needs and preferences of healthcare candidates and the implementation of a marketing strategy that addresses the different stages of the decision-making process, your organization is sure to stand out. For more information on how Crawford drives applications for Hawaiʻi’s largest healthcare system, click here.
