Matt Dane, Senior Vice President, Business Development, Hallmark Health Care Solutions
The healthcare labor market is in the middle of a fundamental shift. Healthcare workers are looking for greater flexibility and balance when it comes to their working arrangements, which poses significant challenges for nurse recruitment and retention. At the same time, traditional staffing models employed by large healthcare providers, which have heavily relied on staffing agencies to fill labor gaps, have proven inadequate and financially unsustainable.
To address these issues, healthcare organizations must accelerate their adoption of more innovative staffing solutions, such as flexible employment models and the use of internal agencies or internal resource pools (IRP). At the same time, organizations must take a bolder approach to recruiting and managing a contingent workforce to meet their dynamic staffing needs without breaking the bank.
Challenges of Traditional Staffing Models
Hospitals have historically turned to staffing agencies during labor shortages. While agencies serve a key role in addressing staffing gaps, too much reliance on these agencies comes with significant drawbacks.
Primarily, reliance on agencies is expensive, placing immense strain on hospital budgets and resulting in unsustainable costs. Additionally, this reliance on external agencies ultimately undermines long-term recruitment and retention efforts. Organizations often end up paying nurses a significant premium for their labor when that nurse may very well work directly for the organization as a (much cheaper) employee if offered the right employment situation.
On the other hand, the traditional float pool concept often leads to worker dissatisfaction and falls short of meeting the needs of complex organizations when managed manually with basic tools like Excel and simple scheduling systems.
Shifting Towards Flexible Employment Models
The healthcare workforce has evolved, with modern workers seeking greater work-life balance and flexibility around working arrangements. If hospitals cannot meet these expectations, they will struggle to recruit and retain top talent, leaving themselves vulnerable to staffing shortages and labor market fluctuations.
As an improved iteration of the internal float pool, flexible employment models can reduce hospitals’ reliance on external agencies and increase access to a broader pool of skilled candidates. To find the right balance of talent and ensure understaffed teams receive proper coverage, hospitals can utilize data from staffing plans and enable efficient staffing at minimal cost to improve working conditions for contract and full-time staff members alike. Additionally, offering competitive pay and flexible work arrangements such as part-time, per diem, and remote work schedules makes hospitals more desirable to prospective candidates.
It’s important for healthcare systems to start thinking differently about their relationship with current and potential employees. By transitioning to an in-house staffing solution, organizations can optimize their labor spend, increase access to high-quality talent, and prioritize their workers’ wellbeing by offering more competitive wages, greater scheduling flexibility, and opportunities for skills development. Organizations can leverage technology to aid in this process, automating and enhancing how they engage with and manage all healthcare workers, no matter where they are.
Building an Internal Resource Pool (IRP)
An effective IRP, the next evolution of the float pool, acts as an internal staffing agency, allowing hospitals to manage their workforce more efficiently. These pools include nurses and other clinical staff who prefer flexible work schedules. Hospitals can reduce their dependency on external agencies and control labor costs by employing these individuals directly as part of a flexible staffing model that enables organizations to retain nurses and clinical staff after training them.
IRPs offer several benefits, including:
- Controlled Labor Costs: Managing labor costs internally helps maintain financial sustainability and reduce reliance on costly staffing agencies.
- Retention of Trained Nurses: By offering flexible employment models, hospitals can retain the nurses they have trained, ensuring access to a skilled and experienced workforce.
- Program Visibility. Maintain a transparent view of your entire contingent labor program to better optimize and prepare for future staffing needs.
However, building a successful IRP requires more than just a manual scheduling system to manage resources and their deployment. It requires a purpose-built technology platform that can seamlessly integrate with existing hospital systems and serve the needs of all departments within the organization. These contingent labor platforms serve as the operational engine for managing staff deployment, ensuring that the right resources are available at the right time. They integrate with existing hospital systems such as applicant tracking systems (ATS), time and attendance, and scheduling software, providing a seamless staffing solution that optimizes organizational workflow.
Steps to Implementing a Successful IRP Program
Many organizations have successfully implemented a fully functioning float pool, or IRP, by embracing these 5 fundamental steps:
- Assess Historical Recruitment and Staffing Needs: Analyze past recruitment rates and staffing gaps to identify areas that cannot be filled through traditional full-time and part-time employment models. This data-driven approach helps in understanding the specific needs of the organization.
- Define Clear Objectives: Establish specific goals for the internal agency, such as reducing contract labor costs, increasing staff retention, and improving patient care quality. Clear objectives guide the development and implementation of the IRP.
- Understand Workforce Preferences: Recognize the types of work arrangements that attract today’s healthcare professionals. This includes flexible scheduling, competitive pay, and opportunities for career advancement. Understanding these preferences is crucial for creating an appealing employment model.
- Recruit Effectively: Compete with staffing agencies by recruiting through the same channels. Utilize job boards, marketplaces, and other platforms where healthcare professionals search for jobs. Effective recruitment strategies ensure a steady stream of qualified candidates for the IRP.
- Implement a Robust Operational Engine: Invest in technology like a continent labor platform that integrates with your existing systems to manage the recruitment, deployment, and communication of your internal resource pool effectively. A robust operational engine ensures smooth and efficient management of the IRP.
Breaking the Cycle of Staffing Challenges
By now, many healthcare systems have successfully implemented IRPs and internally managed platforms, demonstrating how flexible staffing strategies have the potential to optimize resource distribution and minimize contingent labor costs without compromising care quality. By creating a centralized talent hub, IRPs facilitate ongoing skills development and labor management, granting hospital leaders the resources and bandwidth to maximize productivity and position their staff members for success. A well-implemented IRP can reduce an organization’s reliance on external agencies and improve workforce stability.
As significant staffing shortages persist in care centers across the country, the importance of flexible employment models and IRPs in modern healthcare cannot be overstated. Healthcare organizations must be proactive in creating strategic contingent labor programs that offer flexible employment models and are supported by technology platforms built for the job. This will reduce reliance on expensive external agencies and ensure that healthcare systems are better equipped to meet the demands of a dynamic labor market and can position themselves as employers of choice.
About Matt Dane, DNP, MBA, RNMatt Dane, DNP, MBA, RN, isthe Senior Vice President of Business Development at Hallmark Health Care Solutions. In this role, he leads the market expansion of a total contingent workforce management system for health systems and hospitals nationwide. He brings 17 years of nursing experience, serving 13 of those years in nurse leadership roles.
