Flexibility is cure for staff shortages
Laingbuisson private healthcare summit 2022
Demand for staff has never been so high – nor the number of candidates so low, reported Kate Shoesmith, deputy chief executive of the Recruitment and Employment Organisation.
Two months ago, demand was double that of February 2021. Retention was the big problem with, for instance, a 5% increase in nurse vacancies arising in just one week in March. Nursing vacancies totalled 77,000.
She said while pay was important to people during inflationary times, the career agenda was too.
It was imperative to have pay increments, reward and loyalty packages. Just because someone had been with you five to ten years did not mean they would stay forever.
Employers should ask how they were rewarding those existing staff as well as those to whom they were giving golden handshakes who come in from overseas or relocated.
Ms Shoesmith warned that people were now choosing to work in a very different way to the past, with work-life balance especially important.
A global shortage of healthcare workers meant employers will have to compete for staff wherever they went.
Mr Suhail Mirza, author of LaingBuisson’s Healthcare Workforce UK 2021 report, agreed salary increases were not necessarily the answer: people were looking for flexibility.
Flexible rosters
Paul Scandrett, director of international health at rostering solutions company Allocate Software, said very few organisations either corporately or at board level had written down what a good roster looked like.
Those in the UK who were getting their rosters out four to six weeks early were using half as much agency as those who did not. ‘It’s startling. If there’s one thing – get your rosters out on time and with some thought about what good can look like. It can be an absolute transformation.’
Flexibility paid dividends. A lot of staff post-Covid would be looking to work part-time or indeed not at all. His company’s experience was that organisations who allowed staff to self-book their shifts and choose when they wanted to work were, on average, using 25% less agency than those that did not.
Mr Scandrett challenged employers to ask staff how they were feeling, not necessarily every six months or a year but at the end of every shift, so they had as close a feedback loop as possible – ‘because the reality is how the last shift felt like is the way they feel about the organisation’.
He asked them to consider what they had really had a pool or bank for: short-term sickness, long-term absence, cover, an increase with activity? It might be for all those reasons, but comprehending this helped people who would work for them to understand the rules of the game when they were asked to work.
For many staff coming back to the service, or returning temporarily, when they worked was more important than what they were going to earn.