In the last decade, there has been an acute shortage of qualified personnel in the field of healthcare in the world. The problem of human resource management and human resources shortage in the health care field World Health Organization (2016) recognizes as a “global risk”: currently, there is an average shortage of 7.2 million medical professionals worldwide (41). Together with increased responsibility, this leads to significant differences between HR work in healthcare and other business areas.
Most healthcare facilities do not pay enough attention to creating a positive HR brand as other businesses do. HR branding is about how both current employees and potential employees view the company as an employer. A strong HR branding strategy can help the company to attract the best candidates and provide a larger pool of potential employees to select from. On the other hand, a poorly managed HR branding strategy can prevent the top candidates from even applying to job openings. Therefore, the HR department has to devote most of its work to the search for valuable personnel.
In healthcare, it is harder to hire experienced workers. In other areas of business, people tend to change their place of work from time to time. According to Rispel (2018) in healthcare, it happens much less often: such specialists have already developed their patient base, won the recognition of colleagues and management, and are in no hurry to change places of work. For this reason, in hiring HR departments in healthcare use particular methods of recruiting and often rely on young, promising, talented specialists.
Background checks in healthcare should have a special place and be more fundamental than in other areas of business. The fact is that the price of a mistake by a medical employee is very high. It can cost not only the employee’s reputation but the reputation of the whole clinic. Given the intensity of the current culture of cancellation and openness of information, this task becomes easier, and at the same time even more responsible.
Although the work of the HR department is important in any organization, in the field of healthcare they have an even more difficult task. HR in healthcare organizations performs more complex activities than ordinary business. HR professionals has to apply various methods and cope with difficulties for the effective operation of the entire healthcare system.
References
Rispel, L. C., Blaauw, D., Ditlopo, P., & White, J. (2018). Human resources for health and universal health coverage: progress, complexities and contestations. Health review, 2018(1), 13-21.
World Health Organization. (2016). Global strategy on human resources for health: workforce 2030. WHO Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.