Healthcare
Healthcare’s Emerging Workforce Crisis
What the Data Says About the Healthcare Industry’s Outlook
Healthcare organizations are facing increasing worker shortfalls across the United States. The effects of this worker shortage can already be felt, and the industry outlook uncovered by our data on labor supply, labor demand, unemployment rate, and disruptive skills demonstrate the market pressures healthcare organizations need to address in their workforce development strategies.
Risk Factors
2.7
Labor Supply
Severe labor shortages are driven by workers leaving the healthcare industry faster than they are being replaced. This is due to both demographic shifts as workers retire without enough younger workers to replace them, as well as high stress, long training periods, and less attractive pay compared to similarly skilled professions.
3.9
Labor Demand
An aging population is driving higher demand for services, including geriatric care, chronic disease management, and home health. Coupled with labor shortages, healthcare organizations are at risk of not being able to keep up with growing care demands.
3.3
Unemployment Rate
Healthcare organizations can expect to be in competition with one another for talent as workers are in high demand. This means that organizations will need to expand their reach into other geographies, industries where workers can transfer skills into entry-level roles, and explore sourcing workers through immigration.
3.7
Disruptive Skills
The disruptive skills balance is moderate, showing that while the industry is making strides to adopting new technologies and innovations, organizations will need to focus on upskilling and reskilling their workforces to keep pace—both a challenge and an opportunity.
Methodology
Lightcast has conducted an in-depth analysis of 627 of Fortune 1000 companies across the globe to grade the threat that the shrinking labor force wil have across various industries. To note, the grades are not based upon anything that companies are doing wrong, but instead to demonstrate the external factors impacting the ability of industries to maintain a future-ready workforce in an Increasingly disruptive landscape.
Grading Definitions:
Workforce Readiness Outlook
Labor Supply Grade
The overall score for the top 15 (or fewer) markets. A high grade means that the markets have high volumes of workers, a low grade means that the markets have a comparatively low labor supply.
Demand Grade
Combination of the two scores for working age population and Fortune 1000 job postings and Key Competitor presence. A high grade means that, comparatively, the company is not in markets with a lot of other major consumers of talent.
Unemployment Rate Grade
The overall score for the top 15 (or fewer) markets. A high grade means that the markets have higher unemployment rates which will allow longer periods of hiring into the future without enormous pressure on wages. A low grade shows that the unemployment rate is already tight and cannot handle further hiring going forward.
Disruptive Skills
The balance of skills companies are exposed to that are both hard to tind and expensive to acquire. An imbalanced exposure means having either too many skills everyone wants to hire, or too lew skills that organizations will need to catch up to competitors tor.
Solving Healthcare Workforce Management
Talent Analyst
Strategies to Address Labor Supply Challenges
Identifying high-risk areas for staffing shortages and adopting a proactive approach through a deeper understanding of supply and demand in regional markets is critical. External market data will also be crucial in sourcing talent with adjacent skills to meet care delivery needs, talent from non-healthcare sectors that can fill entry-level roles, and talent in other regions to expand recruiting efforts. Additionally, organizations will need to think ahead of immediate talent acquisition. Taking steps to analyze employee demographics (with particular focus on retirements), turnover and retention rates, and leadership and career paths strengthen long-term retention and internal mobility to combat tight competition.
Driving Healthcare Supply and Demand Strategy
An A-graded rehabilitative healthcare provider is using Lightcast’s Talent Analyst to map the supply and demand of critical roles, such as registered nurses. With an index of available nurses and job postings, the organization identified high-risk staffing areas and determined appropriate regional compensation. Insights on the external nursing talent market and industry trends unlocked the organization’s ability to implement strategies to build career pathways, which has reduced turnover and improved recruitment and retention. Talent hot-spot data also provided critical insights into talent demands across regions, informing decisions about opening new facilities and balancing staff.
Talent Transform
Keeping Pace with Skills
Mapping internal roles and skills against the external market to adopt a skills-driven approach is critical for retaining talent that possess skills that are hard to find and expensive to acquire. This requires a data-driven and organized approach to evaluating existing roles, normalizing job architecture, and understanding career paths and disruptive skills. Accurate, real-time data of the skills market enables organizations to adapt to new technologies and ensure employees receive tailored and targeted training and clear career paths, especially in frontline roles. Integrating these insights into workforce planning drives employee retention and stability amongst changing business priorities.
Develop a Skills-Based Talent Strategy
A regionally-focused hospital network is using Lightcast’s Talent Transform to analyze job roles, profile skills, compensation data, and skills gaps. By first leveraging its internal insights from Workday, the organization is able to enrich internal data against external insights to benchmark roles, skills, and salaries against the broader market. This outside-in approach helped standardize and consolidate roles, which created opportunities to pursue foreign-born talent and available workers in adjacent regions.
