By
Keerthi
According to the world staffing association, more than 3 million temporary and contract employees work in hospitals during an average workweek. The use of temporary staff is no longer limited to clerical, manufacturing, and warehouse work. While staffing firms have always had a presence in the healthcare field - nurses, for example - the growth in temporary healthcare staff has accelerated over the last few years. These firms employ not just nurses and doctors, but also a full range of healthcare professionals. Generally, hospitals rely on staffing services to find reliable and reputable healthcare workers. In addition, hospitals can use temporary healthcare staff to fill roles for a short period while they focus on other critical responsibilities. Because of these and other benefits to the healthcare industry, there has been a significant increase in the demand for temporary employees.
What would motivate anyone to work temporarily? Many people would claim that it is irregular or even risky at times. However, that's not entirely true! You may not be aware, but there are several benefits of temporary healthcare employment. If you’ve been toying with the idea of looking for a temporary healthcare position or if you are in the healthcare business, read on to find out some of the most significant benefits of this growing trend:
More Opportunities
Temporary medical positions are an excellent opportunity to get your foot in the proverbial ‘door’ while meeting new people. You can interact with people from varied backgrounds by traveling to various locations or working in different facilities. This can help you with networking and future employment.
Medical staffing services simplify discovering a range of different career opportunities in hospitals, clinics, schools, physician's practices, and rehabilitation centers.
Healthcare will never stop evolving, and as new opportunities and requirements keep pouring in, so will job vacancies.
Scheduling Breaks
Healthcare is too important to be short-handed - staff getting sick, family emergencies, and childcare can result in a decreased level of care for patients. By utilizing temporary healthcare staffing, those positions can be filled, and patient care is not compromised. This allows for the facility to continue to run smoothly by dipping into a pre-existing pool of professional nurses or doctors on-hand that have already been screened by the temporary staffing agencies.
Growth
As a temporary staff member, if you stay with the same institution for a while and perform well, chances are they will choose to promote you to another position instead of looking for a new hire. Moving up in the same company can give you success without the hassle of job hunting and interviewing.
Pay Scale
Most temporary jobs pay a higher hourly rate and may even include a housing allowance or other living arrangements. Some hospitals are in such urgent need of temporary health care workers that they may even give temp staff a bonus as an incentive to keep returning. Most temporary healthcare staff will also receive full-time benefits without being required to work those same hours. Some full-time and part-time staff also work per diem to increase their income.
Also read: 8 Recruiting Hacks That Recruiters Know They Must Use but Don’t
Broaden Your Skillset
Moving from one hospital to another can give you a whole new world of learning opportunities. According to studies, changing your job at regular intervals helps to improve your ability to appear confident.
Healthcare is a constantly evolving profession, and there are always new things to learn. A new facility may offer you something new to learn, or you may get the opportunity to work with a different range of patients. Additionally, each company presents the opportunity to work with innovative methods and technology. If you work in a big hospital, there is likely a more significant division of labor, which means you may have the opportunity to enhance your knowledge within your specialty. On the other hand, a smaller institution with fewer resources may teach you how to handle many roles at a time. As a result, you expand your knowledge and break out from your "regular" routine.
It's Not Permanent
If you are assigned to a position that you do not enjoy, you are not bound to stay there indefinitely. It will be considerably easier to leave if you are unhappy while working as a temporary team member. Having said that, it is important to stay mindful of the number of times you can jump jobs. Too much of it, and employers may think your career chart lacks stability.
Temporary Healthcare Staffing Market Trends
One of the primary reasons supporting market expansion is the growing population of senior citizens. Besides that, increased knowledge about the benefits of temporary healthcare staffing, job-related incentives, and the availability of chances in many locations are other reasons supporting the market's growth.
Additionally, healthcare staffing services are increasingly employed due to the evident dearth of healthcare workers. Travel options, short-term assignments, flexible work hours, and clinical experience at various locales are also available. This upward trend of temporary healthcare staffing needs better ways to scan and hire these workers. Healthcare Recruitment Process Outsourcing or HRPO is the perfect, most efficient way to recruit healthcare staff. HRPO is the process of finding, assessing, and hiring healthcare professionals for a company or organization. Most HRPO solutions are fast and allow you to recruit from staff worldwide, delivering a diverse range of candidates with varied skill-sets.
How can Healthcare RPO help the Challenges Faced by Temporary Healthcare Staffing?
According to some studies, temporary health workers are more likely to get hurt on the job, particularly when it comes to specific jobs that are inherently dangerous. Hiring a steady stream of new employees to work with your equipment and machinery can be risky. Before starting, you need to ensure that your temps are fully trained on health and safety.
Additional Training Time
Temporary staffing is just that: a quick fix. Unfortunately, the more you rely on temporary labor, the more people you have to train and the more time you have to invest in, ensuring the work is done correctly. After a certain point, it becomes ineffective to keep training temporary people for a job that should be a permanent one. This is one of the easy challenges that HRPO can solve quickly. By identifying the best candidates, recruitment process outsourcing can access a large database of qualified candidates and screen resumes to find a suitable candidate for the position. This will save your business training time and money spent on employee training purposes.
Less Time to Vet Candidates
Since you're not making a long-term commitment to a temporary employee, you may be less inclined to spend as much time screening and certifying them as you would on a full-timer. As a result, you may accept someone who is only "okay" for a job rather than waiting for the perfect match. In such circumstances, this is an acceptable trade-off for the ability to move quickly and fill staffing gaps.
In this case, HRPO is the solution. There are several reasons a healthcare organization might choose to outsource its temporary staffing process to an HRPO. Perhaps they don't have the time or resources to do it in-house or may not have the expertise to vet candidates effectively. By outsourcing tasks like recruitment and onboarding, an organization can spend more time on crucial tasks such as improving processes and systems, enhancing patient care, etc., saving the organization time and money while providing top-notch healthcare services.
Culture Fit Can Be a Challenge
Another downside of rapid recruitment of temporary healthcare staff is that they may not all be a good fit for your workplace culture. This may result in some temporary employees who do not fit in with your workplace atmosphere or struggle to collaborate with other team members.
This worry may be removed by picking a qualified staffing partner like HRPO who will consider your corporate culture by selecting temporary staff to send your way. HRPO can help bridge the gap between the employer and the candidate by providing a more personalized experience for the candidate and helping assess the candidate's cultural fit, and making sure that they understand the company culture.
Long-term Planning is More Difficult
Commonly, new hires take anywhere between a few months to a year to become proficient enough in their position to make substantial contributions to the organization. Unfortunately, temporary employees frequently require more time to meet this standard, making it difficult for them to become essential members of your team. As a result, long-term planning in processes and team member duties might be complex. HRPO can solve this problem, too. It works with the healthcare organizations to create a long-term staffing plan by helping their HR identify the best candidates.
As is evident, temporary healthcare staffing can benefit any healthcare organization, whether a big hospital or a small independent clinic. It can be a quick solution to a staffing shortage, and it can also provide a long-term solution to growing your company. In addition, using temporary healthcare staffing can ensure that your company has the resources it needs to succeed.
Exela HR Solutions Offers a variety of end-to-end Recruitment Process Outsourcing services for temporary staffing. You can choose to outsource as many HR functions as you deem fit. With years of experience, Exela is the market leader in Business Process Automation.
The Exela HR Solutions team can help you focus on your business and scale up while your HR functions like Recruitment are managed on time, with precision and consistency. Partner with the right team to solve all your recruitment problems! Find out more here.
DISCLAIMER: The information on this site is for general information purposes only and is not intended to serve as legal advice. Laws governing the subject matter may change quickly, and Exela cannot guarantee that all the information on this site is current or correct. Should you have specific legal questions about any of the information on this site, you should consult with a licensed attorney in your area.