Speaker 1: My name is Meredith Gershenson. I am a research analyst here at workforce.com. You know, welcome to today's webinar. So we'll be talking about how to solve the staffing crisis in the healthcare industry. You know, feel free to drop in any questions you have throughout the webinar itself in the chat box. Our video producer, Andrew, will tag the questions so Bo and I can see it. And if you have any technical issues at all, again, feel free to tag Andrew. You can just do at Andrew and he'll get the question and he'll reply to you right away. Definitely. At the end of the webinar, we'll actually be sending out a quick survey for you all. So that'll just appear right up on your screen and help you gauge just how prepared you are for the staffing shortage. So in addition to the survey, you know, you also get a chance to win an $100 Amazon gift card as, you know, just a little more incentive for you guys. And to give a little background on workforce.com, we are a staffing management software company and have been around since 1922. You know, we love to host these webinars just as a little thank you for checking us out, using our product or even just going to our website. So without further ado, let's get started. So the health care industry is without a doubt one of the most heavily impacted industries in the world. You know, in terms of economically, human behaviorally and even internally speaking, the organizations have really struggled just just this past year, year and a half. Economically, the operating losses were up to three hundred and twenty three billion dollars, according to AHA, which is record breaking, to say the least. So this averages is about 50 billion dollars per month in lost revenue. Twenty twenty one is actually considered to be the worst recession since the Great Depression, according to The Wall Street Journal, which was mind boggling to me. Human behaviorally, you know, we see a shift from in-person to virtual care and telehealth. So I'm actually not sure if many of you are familiar with Amazon Care. We actually did cover it in a past webinar titled How the health care industry was disrupted by Amazon. And you could find that just right on our website. But Amazon Care really honed into telehealth, virtual care, at home care and all that good stuff. So we see this huge shift and this huge push to get away from hospitals, to get away from that in-person care that is so traditional in the industry itself. Internally speaking, many U.S. citizens have chosen not to vaccinate due to a variety of reasons. And this has caused a bit of strife between staff and management. New personnel restrictions are being made every day in clinics and especially elder care organizations. So if you actually check out the poll that we just sent out, we're curious, you know, what health care sector do you work in?

Speaker 2: I'm interested in the people voting for other. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to drop in the chat where you're coming in from, what industry? I think that would be beneficial for everyone.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. There's a good amount of you guys, too. So, you know, we're always willing to hear and again, feel free to drop in any questions, comments, thoughts into the chat. We love to interact with you guys, you know, going to the chart that we see on the slide. It's from Kroll's 2019 report on the industry sectors most targeted. So, of course, hospital systems are number one here. You know, it's not surprising considering the intake of patients and the dramatic drop of nurses creating this great unbalance in the industry itself. So with this slide, I found this really interesting stuff from the University of Albany, where nearly 50 percent of the U.S. workforce is employed in the health care industry. So to reference and to kind of get that big point of view, that's 19 million jobs out of 143. So that's a pretty big percentage if you really think about it. So I was speaking to one of our clients, the CEO of an elder care facility, and he is dealing with a lot of issues relating to registered nurse shortages. He especially is having to deal with a lot of operating problems, a lot of RNs being fired for not even complying with the new code regulations, managing staff burnout, all that, all that good stuff. So, you know, the crisis here, as he describes, lies within the search for talent and most importantly, qualified individuals. And that is, you know, a pretty pretty tough search these days in the labor market. If you look at the graph to the left on the slide, it shows a projected RN shortages. So California here is leading the way. And, you know, it makes sense considering, again, the last year that they've had. Currently, now they're dealing with, like most of the world, the Delta variant being on the rise, the reimplementation of masks, requirement of teachers to be vaccinated. And even many counties are discussing keeping their schools closed this upcoming fall.

Speaker 2: And I think a lot of that, too, contributes to that element of burnout that one of our clients was talking about is, you know, there's a lot of mental and physical fatigue to restarting this, you know, while it's a necessary procedure. You know, it's it's difficult, I think, from a lot of employees perspective to not feel that level of burnout as as this reality shifts again.

Speaker 1: Right. I totally agree. I mean, I think it's, again, a lot of people are reevaluating their work life balance principles. And whether personal reasons or not, I do think that the lack of nurses is something where, you know, it's hard to equate and it's hard to foresee and forecast, you know, just how that trend is going to go either up or down, seeing just how the states are doing these days. Awesome. So, you know, even still, the industry is recovering from 2019 where COVID, of course, was at its highest. It will be very interesting to see, you know, just how this is going to look if the Delta variant spikes. You know, I'd love to hear again from you guys in the chat box. Feel free to drop in your thoughts. You know, with new regulations, it's really hard to keep staff on call. And many doctors and nurses are again, quitting due to burnout or simply not wanting to contract the virus. You know, it's interesting if you look on this little red graph to the right of the slide, you see a lot of these states highlighted in darker red. And that indicates the states that are struggling the most. This graph is actually from 2018. So it's right before COVID-19 hit. But it is interesting to see that even the states that are darker are still struggling a great extent even today. So a quote from a Missouri local news article, you could see that the state is very dark red here. The Mid-America Regional Council co-chair said, we are seeing many, many healthcare providers who are just very, very tired of 18 months of nonstop work. So again, you know, this goes back to the idea of burnout. And, you know, it's a big struggle for these guys. So even just yesterday, the Texas governor deployed 2,500 medical staff to help hospitals short on staff due to the uptick in cases, especially in the south.

Speaker 2: Interesting, yeah. And I think Kevin just brought up a very interesting point in the chat regarding Pennsylvania announcing an increase in the minimum staffing in nursing homes. I did not hear that news, Kevin, but I am shocked that that's the case in Pennsylvania, given the situation that we're having with such a significant labor shortage. But to the topic, you know, we've kind of described what the problem is, which is that staffing shortage, particularly with healthcare officials. Now we kind of want to shift into how we're going to solve that. Two best ways, obviously. One, our recruiting and our efforts to bring people in. And then two, our efforts to retain people. So I think that we're going to have some advice and some insights into both of those things. But that's ultimately how you're going to try and get those numbers up to that 4.1 that maybe Pennsylvania wants or, you know, whatever the restrictions are in the states. That the rest of the audience is from. So first off, in terms of retention, there's a lot of different things that we can do related to employees that we've heard customers talking about. Number one, offer incentives. There's a little money bag and little emoji right there, but it doesn't necessarily have to be about money. Incentives can be a lot of different things. In addition to money, you can talk about travel assistance. I think there was opportunities for, you know, helping with the commute between different communities when needs shift between them. We can talk about career growth. That's something that can motivate and keep people engaged within their work is something, you know, an end goal, an objective. It helps, you know, get through the tough times as well as just a level of organization. I think from the administrative perspective, when we have a demonstrated post-COVID plan of action, people feel they're on the same page. There's end goals. There's something that they can buy into. I think you'll see a lot more employee excitement and buy in for what you're trying to do. The communication channels, you know, how much are we talking to the employees? Are we getting their feedback? It's a big component of, you know, retaining employees is just allowing them the opportunity to be heard. So how we do that and where we do it is going to be very important as well as just creating retention strategies. So kind of summarizing all of that into, you know, a plan so that we can act on that plan and hit all those different components of retention. And some of the best ways we can do that is actually through predictive analytics to help remove a lot of the, you know, information we may not have a full understanding yet, but we have an intuition on. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Really quick.

Speaker 2: Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1: Going back to that last slide. You know, Sandra had a really good point that going back to the first point, actually offering incentives, that unemployment and, you know, COBRA benefit incentives are not making it easy at all. And I'm curious on your thoughts on that, you know, come next month, do you think that without these government stimulus checks and incentives, we'll see an uptick in, you know, staffing?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, so I never like to predict too much because, you know, in the last year, we've definitely had a lot of unpredictable things come up. But I would say that the unemployment and the COBRA benefits, as they phase away, you can, I, you know, I don't have the official quote, but I know for a fact that there are several states that are experiencing increases in their employment numbers correlated to their decrease in their unemployment benefits. So I think that that's definitely something to watch and something to look out for as we roll away from those things. So with that being said, we can also look from a behavioral perspective when we're looking at our employees. There's a lot of different indications that you can see come up when an employee may or may not be a flight risk. Some of those are going to be, you know, how many days are they taking off as well as when they take them off that? Are they telling you immediately? Or is it a thing they plan two weeks in advance? Are they leaving and signing off early? So just your punctuality, understanding, you know, do they care about being on time? Do they care about their perception of their professionalism? Are they signing on late? Are they speaking up less, which is an indication that they don't necessarily care about the conversations at hand because they may not feel a part of it. And they as well might just be experiencing full less enthusiasm. You know, if they aren't as excited about their jobs, you can definitely tell when people, you know, are of that mindset. And, you know, it's kind of that sad cloud that follows them around in the room. And, you know, I think that that's one of the biggest things that you can point out. So we do have a poll up that's asking, you know, what might be your opinion on the behavioral change? Looks like we're getting a lot of take more days off, speak up less. Other looks like generally people are agreeing with that with us in regards to the time off.

Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, finding these indicators and really pinpointing, especially if you are in the HR position operations and you're overseeing a big group or a big staff, it's really hard to find, you know, these indicators and find, oh, this person's been taking this day off a lot more or this person's not really been enthusiastic, not coming in on time. It's hard to pinpoint. So especially when you have a big staff, I mean, that's got to be difficult.

Speaker 2: Yep. And part of that, too, is, you know, we can always say we think these things and you might notice it. But the best way to do this one is to find quantitative data to help back up your intuitions and then to to collect qualitative data in regards to how people are actually feeling. One of the best ways that we can do that is through attendance report insights. So when you have softwares or systems that are backing up your clock ends, your punctualities, your scheduling, it can be a strong indicator and an easily aggregatable set of data to allow you to say, oh, so this individual actually think in this next slide right here, we can see a difference between two people. One at the top is, you know, they were punctual six times out of seven. They left early once. So it probably wasn't too big of an issue for them to in terms of punctuality. But the person right under you can see arrived late. Literally every single shift left early. Two of them. And so I would say that the person on the bottom is definitely exhibiting signs of flight risk. Right. You can also track, again, those PTO requests or sick requests when they're being asked. So is it a two week notice? Is it a day notice? And just all of that forecasting can really contribute to your understanding of how that behavior is changing an employee, especially when you have the historical data to back it up. Maybe I'm acting this way right now, but two weeks beforehand, I had a perfect record. Right. So it might be a conversation of something wrong happened in the workplace. And, you know, we can come back and actually talk about it and get an employee back to the status quo of enjoying their work, showing up on time, taking pride and priority in what they're doing. The other aspects of that is that employee feedback. So, again, I said it once before and I'll say it again. Employees value being heard. I don't know if anyone has any insights in the chat regarding how they've been able to pull feedback in the past. I know for a fact that, you know, automated surveys are a great way of getting that information. I think it allows the burden of, you know, if you have a large staff, if there's 100 people and there's one HR person, that's a lot of one on ones to schedule, a lot of checkups to be had that can very well fully take over an HR individual's schedule. And so allowing the feedbacks to go out on an automated way helps you identify who's not having a good time. So you can take that wide net you're casting by meeting with 100 percent of 100 people say, OK, these 10 individuals are exhibiting signs of they're giving negative feedback. And so it's worth reaching out because, again, that turnover is big. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, Meredith.

Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. You know, I'm curious, being someone who's worked with a lot of these bigger health care industries, implementing and consulting, how often would you recommend giving out these feedbacks? Would you say more on a quarterly basis, week to week, you know, maybe more for the newer recruits, newer staff? They should be handed out more feedback. What do you think?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think the weekly perspective probably gives you the best insight because we can all have a bad day and that might not necessarily indicate your inclination for leaving. But a bad week, I think, is way more indicative of what your actions might be. And so from a weekly perspective, you're not pulling too much of the finite details. You're getting a more broader sense of how did your week go. You can eliminate some of maybe those outlier experiences and get an understanding of, you know, did you enjoy this week? And I think a lot of large employee employers, you know, with 100 staff, 100 surveys a day, that's a lot to handle.

Speaker 1: Definitely. And I think, you know, on a weekly basis, it's a little easier from the perspective of the employee to gauge just how everything's going from week to week. You know, it's simple as that. Being able to kind of reflect on that in the sense that you can compare and contrast from previous weeks is super helpful to see, you know, an honest feedback for your HR operating member, chief of staff, anyone like that. So from the perspective of the flip side, I think that a week to week is ideal and it's easier to kind of just give a more honest answer, honestly. And I think for HR operations, you know, all those upper management, I think more honesty in that sense is the best way to indicate, you know, that flight risk.

Speaker 2: Cool. Looks like Kevin has a good question in the chat, which is, how do you increase participation in feedback surveys? Statistically, a 65 percent response rate is considered a very engaged workforce, which I think is an awesome question. My initial thought and something that I've heard in the past from other customers is, you know, part of being heard is getting a response back. So maybe you involve direct managers or HR individuals who, you know, it doesn't have to be every single time, but just reaching out and saying thank you for filling it out, understanding that data is actually going somewhere. And people are reading it and taking your opinions into consideration. I think that's a good option. Meredith, I'm not sure if you have other ideas with that.

Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think when it comes to feedback surveys, keeping it very simple is the way to go. Again, if you're sending a feedback survey out on a week to week basis, I think it's important to keep it pretty minimal, keep it pretty easy to follow. I think with a 65 percent response rate, I do think that's an awesome statistic. Obviously, this depends, again, on how big your workforce is. If you have a pretty small staff with you, I think ideally higher would be great. You know, Debbie actually just entered in a really great question. She said, what are your thoughts about people leaving their immediate supervisor, not a job? What do you think about that, Beau?

Speaker 2: Really quick, before we answer that, I did think of two other things regarding the other question. One would be, it also depends on the medium in which you're using to get feedback. If it's like a piece of paper on the board or something in the break room that you just sit down and fill out, I think you're way less inclined, as opposed to if it's some type of automation where, you know, at the point you're clocking out, you're getting an automated survey or it's on your computer. Your phone or something like that, I think both of those can, you know, help increase that. But to Debbie's question regarding the people leaving their immediate supervisor, I think that's ultimately, the onus is on the organization in terms of how flexible they can be with transfers. But I know for a fact that management is one of the primary negative feedbacks that we see within our clientele. And so if the easiest and the best way, you know, to solve some of those largest problems is to transfer people to different supervisors, then, you know, you do what you have to do to maintain your workforce. Again, this is, you know, a labor shortage. And so if we can be accommodating, if there's another supervisor that we can move to, then I think we should do it.

Speaker 1: I completely agree. I like, you know, Sue's point on just even the small things, you know, like handwritten thank you notes, gift cards. Yeah. And, you know, going back to the first point, these are incentives. You know, when we do think of incentives, we think of monetary value. But even a thank you note, you know, that costs little to nothing. And that means the world to the employees. It means that, you know, again, that they're heard and that their thoughts and their feedback is valued. So I think that, you know, sending out those little bits of incentives are key. And again, that's kind of why we put it as number one on that previous slide.