Successful organizations have teams that display certain behaviors. Organizations that are able to find, hire, develop and retain people who can perform, succeed. Those that don’t, struggle. It’s that simple. Talent wins.
We looked at hospitals that have made the most gains toward building a team ready to face the challenges. Here are the top six strategies we’ve seen:
According to Psychology Today, about 80% of Fortune 500 companies use personality tests to assess potential and current employees to make hiring, team building, and developmental decisions.
Healthcare organizations are looking for innovative solutions: New technologies, new care delivery models, and new approaches to talent. They are also looking to other industries – adopting lean or Toyota Production Systems, better decision-support systems, and more sophisticated revenue cycle approaches. Other industries have used behavioral assessments for decades. Surveys show that as many as 70% of companies now use behavioral and personality assessment tools in their hiring process. It’s become so ubiquitous that Time Magazine did a cover story on it.
Simple isn’t necessarily easy. In fact, simple can be hard. I like this recent article from Inc. about the design secrets of Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs. From the article:
“When we don't do the necessary work up front to create a design that is simple and elegant, we end up building products and services that are complex and cluttered. Put another way: Simple is hard.”
This principle applies to building an effecting hiring system. Everyone is looking for the magic platform, program, or app that will solve their problem – or ALL of their problems. The reality is that the solution is a combination of tools put together in a thoughtful manner.
A disclaimer: This is NOT a political statement. Nor is it an endorsement or criticism of Donald Trump as a President. It IS, however, a harsh criticism of what appears to be a struggling hiring system. Candidate Trump vowed to run the White House like a business, and any business is built on its human capital and talent systems.
In his previous line of work, he had decades to build his team. He probably hired based largely on personal relationships and instinct. If he was wrong, he had time to correct the mistake.
Now, he has a short window to fill a large number of diverse, complex, senior positions. There are plenty of highly qualified and talented people in various roles in the administration. His hiring system as a whole, though, appears to be struggling. We’d be happy to help - if he wants help. Yes, I’m offering up our team’s services.
I came to Select International seven years ago with a background in hospital operations/strategy consulting, and before that, I was an employment and healthcare law attorney. After joining Select, I learned a great deal about the human capital management industry. I’d worked with plenty of employers, including healthcare employers, but as an attorney you deal with issues that arise, not human capital “strategy.”
The discussions about physician behavioral competencies have evolved over the past few years. Five years ago, the idea that behavioral competencies (emotional intelligence, collaboration, negotiation skills, leadership skills, relationship skills, etc.) were important for physicians was an intriguing idea. Three years ago, organizations started exploring HOW these competencies were important – how do they impact organizational dynamics, the patient experience, or even patient outcomes?
Healthcare organizations are adopting progressive talent strategies from other industries. This often means using more objective, deliberate, and standardized hiring tools such as pre-hire assessments. If done correctly, this “evidence-based” approach to hiring yields great results. It can reduce turnover, improve time-to-hire, and help you to identify candidates, with the attributes you value, who are more likely to succeed on the job.
The evolution of “evidence-based" medicine changed the healthcare industry. Not that long ago, clinical judgment, anecdotal evidence, and personal experience ruled clinical decision-making. Then we discovered that using research to drive decision making, treatment guidelines, and policies vastly improved outcomes and saved lives.
Leaders are thinking differently about talent – how to select, engage and develop people at every level who will support the organization’s goals. It’s relatively new for healthcare. Our focus has been on clinical and technical skills for so long that some senior leaders are just realizing the amazing impact of talent – and more importantly, of deliberate talent strategies.
More senior leaders are asking their teams to focus on behavioral skills, have made talent acquisition and organizational development a priority, and given human resources a seat at the strategy table. To understand these changes, we’ve put together a panel of experts for an interactive discussion during our webinar on June 29th, 2016. The panel:
