New research from Madeline Laurano and Aptitude Research confirms that 84% of talent acquisition leaders know employee referrals are the workhorse of sourcing – but then why are so many programs failing to deliver improved hiring outcomes?

In this new report, Solving the Sourcing Challenge, Madeline explores how 300+ talent acquisition leaders are navigating the ongoing tight labor market and the challenge to find enough people to hire and fill jobs. Sourcing talent remains one of the most challenging areas of HR, and this year 72% of leaders are rethinking their sourcing strategy entirely. The top challenges companies face, include:

  • Finding diverse candidates (cited in the research as the biggest sourcing challenge)
  • Lack of good technology
  • Difficulty searching for candidates in the ATS
  • Limited in-house expertise

The research revealed that when TA leaders examine different sourcing channels, they believe employee referrals are the most effective source of hire. However, while 82% have some employee referral program in place today, many are failing to reach their full potential.

In addition to saving costs, employee referrals bridge the gap between recruitment and retention by engaging both new hires and existing employees in the hiring process.

How can hiring teams lean into, and optimize, referrals?

While the report outlines the challenges teams are facing with sourcing, and employee referrals as a sourcing channel, Madeline also recommends strategies leaders can consider to help boost effectiveness. When done right, referrals are the only sourcing channel that measurably improves every critical core recruiting metric – from 62% reduction in time-to-fill to a 2x improvement in first-year retention.

So, you have (or, want) to make employee referrals a critical part of your sourcing strategy, here are some resources for getting started:

Across every industry, the past few years have been especially volatile for Human Resources (HR) and Talent Acquisition (TA) leaders – from scaling back, to ratcheting up, and everything in between.  Now, hiring teams in healthcare are facing a particularly turbulent time. On top of ongoing change and uncertainty, they’re finding themselves in the midst of a perfect storm.

Raging turnover, acute skills shortages and climbing demand are making it seemingly impossible to build and maintain their workforce.

As our population ages, chronic illnesses rise and the healthcare workforce faces intense burnout, the reality facing companies is staggering:

  • There will be an estimated shortage of 400k home health aides and 98k medical technicians by 2025 (Mercer)
  • Hospital staff have turned over by 100.5% in the last 5 years (DailyPay)
  • There will be 200k annual openings for nurses through 2030 (BLS), with turnover costing the average hospital $5-9m per year.

Acute skills shortages and burnout are creating the ‘perfect storm’ for healthcare labor challenges.

As new opportunities outpace filling existing positions, healthcare companies are creating mounting workforce debt.  At the same time, they’re finding themselves in stiff competition with both competing healthcare organizations and non-hospital employers pursuing burnt-out employees willing to leave the field. As a result, HR teams are trying to remedy the gap any way they can – the need to hire externally has risen by a staggering 76% (PWC), with hospitals seeing labor costs rise 37% from 2019 to 2022 (US News).

If you’re a TA leader in the healthcare space, the inability to find and hire the people you need to build a capable healthcare workforce is crippling the business. Contract labor as a percent of total labor expense has increased by over 5x (KaufmanHall). In a recent article, one hospital system CFO noted that their staffing expenses have exploded by over 485%, with an estimate of $11 million spent on temporary labor in 2022.  But, costs aren’t the only concern amidst this perfect storm – inadequate support staff is limiting operating capacity, while patient care and safety are at risk.

The use of staffing agencies, contract labor and rising ad spend isn’t a scalable solution for filling a widening talent gap and building a sustainable workforce – so, what is? At Aliro, we’re taking a different approach to help healthcare companies stop competing for the same limited pool of talent to fill their open jobs.  The New Healthcare Hiring Playbook outlines why this is a game-changer for everybody from hospital systems to healthcare services companies by uniting a number of powerful sourcing channels to create a proprietary Healthcare Talent Sourcing Community that extends reach and fills jobs faster – here’s a peek at why it’s more effective than traditional sourcing:

  • Engage the Passive Talent You’re Missing – Over 70% of available talent are not actively looking for jobs, so spend on sourcing channels targeting job seekers have an inherently low reach and ROI. There’s a way to reach the majority of people your spend (and, your competition) are missing altogether.
  • Optimize the Networks you Already Have – You already know thousands (probably, tens of thousands) of viable candidates for your open roles – from alumni to silver medalists and everybody in between – but your spend is focused on finding new-to-you people. Technology plays a powerful role in helping you win the race to get in front of the right-fit talent at the right time, proactively delivering new jobs to the talent you already know.
  • Extend your reach exponentially – If you have 2,000 employees, you have 2,000 recruiters – but, what if you could also tap into those employees’ extended networks and let them help you find and engage candidates to bring into your talent pipeline? Make it easy for the workforce you have today to play a critical role in building your workforce of tomorrow, by equipping and engaging your employees and their networks to help you find skilled talent.

Taking an entirely new community-based approach, we aren’t going to tell you how to fill your healthcare jobs – we’re just going to get it done for you.  You can stop worrying about soaring spend and how to allocate your resources.

Learn more about this new approach in the New Healthcare Hiring Playbook, then visit onaliro.com/healthcare and schedule time to talk with our healthcare hiring team.