Count On Coffey

In their efforts to combat staff shortages, healthcare organizations are dealing with a perfect storm: burnout, an aging workforce and a growing demand for care.

The storm isn't going to settle down soon, according to the American Hospital Association, which predicts the industry will see a shortage of about 100,000 critical healthcare workers by 2028.

In response, many healthcare organizations are rethinking recruitment and retention. One powerful but often overlooked approach is to encourage marketing and human resources departments to collaborate on attracting top talent, retaining valuable staff and building a positive workplace culture.

Why marketing and HR make perfect partners

As healthcare organizations face increasing pressure to recruit strategically, collaboration between HR and marketing is a natural fit. HR identifies workforce needs, recruits talent and boosts retention. Marketing crafts compelling messages, builds brand awareness, and targets the right audiences. Together, they amplify impact with consistent messaging that strengthens the organization's employer brand.

Projecting a unified message can help the entire organization by:

Promoting its image as a solid employer. With marketing crafting the storytelling and HR providing insights about what employees care about, you'll be deploying a message about what a great place to work your organization is.

Reaching the right candidates. Your marketing team knows how to get the message out by using strategic marketing tools—digital ads, social media and content marketing—to help ensure truly targeted recruitment campaigns and optimize results.

Improving staff retention. Marketing can help drive internal communication strategies that cultivate a sense of community and engagement within the workforce, showcase opportunities for advancement and help keep employees motivated.

Actionable steps for collaboration

Now is the time to develop a well-rounded strategy that enables marketing and HR to use all the tools of their trades to help your hospital attract and retain top talent. Here are just a few proven approaches:

1. Have HR and marketing build on a joint branding strategy to deliver coherent and consistent messaging across the careers pages and job postings on your website and social media platforms.

2. Employ targeted digital advertising to help you reach the right candidates.

3. Using data from employee surveys and other feedback sources about what employees value, craft storytelling that will attract quality candidates.

4. Include actual employee experiences in your recruitment materials and social media posts to make your content more compelling.

5. Develop targeted social media ads that reach specific job seekers.

6. Use video content featuring actual staff to showcase your workplace culture.

7. Include relevant keywords in your job postings to improve your search rankings.

8. Encourage employee advocacy. Staff can add credibility to recruitment efforts by sharing positive experiences on job sites and other platforms, participating in referral programs to help bring in new talent and contributing blog posts or videos about their roles.

Categories: Marketing