HCM Pain Points for Healthcare organisations — and tech solutions to remedy them

A snapshot of the Healthcare industry 

In the past, hearing the term ‘frontline worker’ may have painted a picture of a police or fireman in your mind. After the pandemic, however, it may have become a nurse, doctor, or paramedic. These deskless workers carried the world through one of the most transformational events of our time — and now, the Healthcare workforce is feeling the strain.  

The term ‘health professional’ encompasses a wide range of positions, many of which are impacted by skills shortages. In Australia, for example, there are 16 professions on the list of registered medical professions by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA). In 2022, the health workforce represented 5.0% of the total employed workforce in Australia, and the Health Care and Social Assistance industry grew to employ 2.1 million people.  

This growth comes as no surprise, either. The Skills Priority List (SPL) report from 2023 showed that four in five (82%) health professional occupations were in shortage, particularly in terms of general practitioners (GP), nurses, and mental health professionals. Health Workforce Australia also estimated there would be a shortage of 100,000 nurses by 2025, as well as 11,000 additional GPs by 2032. 

It’s clear that there’s an insatiable demand for healthcare workers — not only in Australia, but across the globe. World Health Organisation statistics project a shortfall of 11 million health workers by 2030, especially in low- and middle-income countries. 

As populations continue to age, medical technology advances at rapid pace, and preventative care becomes the new cure, Healthcare leaders need to ask themselves one key question: do we have enough of the (right) people to secure the future of Healthcare? 

Introduction to HCM challenges faced by Healthcare providers 

Many Healthcare workers find fulfilment in improving the lives of others. However, a career in Healthcare is no walk in the park, and there are several caveats that lead to HCM issues: high-stress environments, long shifts, frequent overtime, and confronting scenarios and patients to handle. 

These elements are fueling employee burnout, disengagement, and high turnover rates. The constant skills shortages result in further stress as workers are required to cover for absent colleagues.

For Healthcare providers worldwide, adopting a modern HCM tech solution is one of the best ways to optimise their workforces and create a more tolerable employee experience (EX).

Pain point #1: Workforce scheduling complexity 

Healthcare providers have an inherent duty of care towards their patients — and without effective scheduling, there’s no way to know if there will enough staff available, in the right place, and at the right time. 

Scheduling becomes increasingly complex when a facility operates 24/7, like hospitals that require nurses and doctors be present at all hours. Keeping in mind that these industries already suffer staff shortages, it becomes even more difficult to fill each shift slot. In states like Victoria (Australia) and California (US), there are also legal nurse-to-patient ratios to comply with.  

Inefficient scheduling is the main road to burnout. Poorly built rosters often cause unexpected overtime and last-minute call-ups, which become exhausting for staff in these departments over time. 

How Humanforce can help ease scheduling complexity 

Rostering & Scheduling 

Humanforce’s Rostering & Scheduling solution allows Healthcare HR and staffing coordinators to auto-generate optimised, demand-driven, award-compliant rosters in just a few clicks.  

Healthcare staff can be split across multiple locations and be notified about shift conflicts, while managers can keep an accurate record of total hours worked. This helps ensure staff only work their designated hours, preventing burnout and unnecessary spending on labour costs for the business. 

Employees also stand to benefit from features such as the ability to bid on available shifts or swap shifts — all while using the Humanforce Work App. This provides greater flexibility and autonomy — potentially helping workers to fit work more effectively around their life commitments.

For further tips about effective rostering in hospitals, read our previous blog.

Leave Management

Leave Management streamlines the leave process by eliminating manual processes and minimising the impact of employee absence. It allows Healthcare managers to plan and manage their team’s attendance, paid leave for holidays, sick leave, parental leave, and other forms of leave — all in one place. 

This solution also features leave tracking, a projection calculator, and inbuilt compliance intelligence to automatically manage leave restrictions based on location, department and role. Employees can also self-serve the leave process as they are able to view their balance and submit leave requests as they wish, accelerating the approval process by removing unnecessary touchpoints.

Pain point #2: Skills shortages 

The demand for Healthcare continues to outpace supply. As stated above, four out of five health occupations were in shortage in 2023, especially GPs, nurses, and mental health professionals.  

There are several reasons as to why. An aging population, an ever-increasing emphasis on mental health treatment, the emergence of cutting-edge medical technology, and the redistribution of communities outside of metropolitan areas, to name a few. 

With a person’s health — or even life — on the line, there is no margin for error. It’s imperative that Healthcare providers have access to enough qualified, skilled individuals on call to deal with any level of patient influx.   

How Humanforce can help find suitable talent

Talent 

Given the ever-increasing demand for skilled Healthcare workers worldwide, having access to a pool of pre-qualified candidates that can be called up on-demand is invaluable.  

The Humanforce Talent Suite is an all-in-one talent acquisition platform that pools pre-qualified candidates, contractors, internal staff and alumni into a single Talent Community. Healthcare HR managers can analyse demand forecasts and tap into the power of volume-based hiring, with the ability to contact large groups of suitable staff for each job. 

Each member of the Talent Community is given a profile complete with qualifications, achievements, preferences and work history. This reduces the time to hire and is a modern solution to contingent hiring — this being a real consideration for Healthcare HR managers facing epidemics, mass-casualty incidents, and natural disasters. 

The Talent Suite can also help build and reinforce your employer brand to stand out from the pack. Healthcare management can create a career site that showcases their organisation’s culture with standout job listings and wellbeing perks. The application process can also be enhanced with engaging visuals and content tailored to each role. 

Workforce Analytics 

With skills shortages potentially impacting care outcomes, Healthcare providers need to optimise existing human resources. Humanforce’s Workforce Analytics grants Healthcare managers access to robust analytics & reporting capabilities, which can transform data into actionable insights. The reporting features can be used out-of-the-box or customised according to your needs. 

Healthcare managers who are required to manage multiple facilities or departments can do so by viewing key metrics such as absenteeism, tardiness, nurse to patient ratios, shift acceptance rates, overtime hours and labour costs, all via the same dashboard.

Pain point #3: Employee turnover 

Careers in Healthcare can be overwhelming. The long hours, confronting scenes, and constant weight of responsibility may become too much for these workers to bear, especially for frontline workers like nurses, GPs, and paramedics. 

The Australian Practice Nurses Association’s 2022 survey revealed that 26.2% of primary care nurses were considering leaving their job within two to five years, with three quarters of respondents claiming they felt exhausted, stressed, and burnt out at work.  

Pay increases aside, there’s plenty more that Healthcare employers can do to reduce employee turnover. According to McKinsey, tailoring retention strategies directly to employee needs and preferences, while minimising workload strains through innovation are two strategic ways to retain frontline Healthcare staff. Humanforce provides solutions to execute both of these strategies. 

How Humanforce can reduce employee turnover 

Employee Engagement 

The Humanforce Employee Engagement solution gives employees a voice. It enables HR and managers to create bespoke surveys to gather employee feedback. Managers can track happiness and wellbeing over the entire employee lifecycle, and align wider teams around goals for better collaboration. 

Taking time to understand the feelings and personal circumstances of Healthcare employees can help reduce their stress levels, often through praise for merit, more shift flexibility, and temporary reductions of workload. 

Benefits 

According to Gallup, the number one way to prevent employee burnout is by making wellbeing a part of your culture — this includes providing the tools to help employees practice wellness and live healthier lives overall. 

Humanforce Benefits is a financial wellbeing app designed to alleviate financial stress.* Its range of features provide financial education and tools to budget and save money, including early access to pay and cashback rewards for everyday purchases. 

*Currently only available to Australian Humanforce customers.

Pain point #4: Compliance 

Healthcare workforces are often comprised of multiple different professions — making already complex compliance landscapes, even more difficult to navigate.

Most critically, Healthcare organisations must acknowledge and comply with the complex industry awards and employment agreements under which their employees are protected. This is essential, as the award is referred to when calculating accurate payroll, as well as leave, notice, and redundancy entitlements. The Health Professionals and Support Services Award [MA000027] is the key point of reference for Healthcare organisations across Australia. 

Alongside industry registrations (such as the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency), patient privacy and confidentiality, and workplace health and safety obligations, Healthcare providers must stay on top of qualifications management.

How Humanforce can help employers stay compliant 

Awards & Compliance 

The Awards & Compliance solution allows Healthcare providers to accurately interpret complex awards and enterprise agreements, track changes as they happen, and apply them with ease. 

The sophisticated award interpretation engine (sometimes referred to as a pay conditions engine) ensures that all modern awards and employment agreement pay obligations and entitlements are met, providing instant calculations to indicate exactly how much employees should be paid. The pay conditions engine quickly and accurately calculates wages, penalties, overtime and allowances in accordance with the relevant industrial instrument(s). 

Compliance Management 

Humanforce’s Compliance Management solution is a qualifications management tool, that helps employers stay on top of not just training and education but other critical compliance-related obligations.  

Users can receive notifications about renewal dates for things like work visas and vaccinations before they hit, track qualifications for different job roles, and stay on top of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) requirements with training and qualifications monitoring. CPD is mandatory for all registered health practitioners across Australia.

Pain point #5: Employee record keeping 

Organisations operating in most countries are required by law to keep employee records. In Australia, for example, organisations must keep employment records for 7 years, such as employee details, how much they were paid, information about hours worked, and more.  

Compliance is important — but so too is the accurate record keeping of your staff, and especially so for larger Healthcare organisations or facilities such as hospitals or medical practices with hundreds or thousands of employees.  

How Humanforce can help with more efficient record keeping 

Core HR 

With Core HR, Healthcare HR departments are able to store employee data in a centralised repository. Whether it be employee contact information, work schedules, payroll, job details, managers can view, edit, and track this data in real time.  

Organising Healthcare staff into a single, secure location gives managers a comprehensive birds-eye view of all departments. With this information, they can complete HR tasks and fast-track decision making under pressure.  

Conclusion 

As the demand for Healthcare grows — at a rate that will likely never slow — so does the need for more efficient HCM processes. Utilising modern HR tech is a key way of improving the EX for more engaged and motivated Healthcare staff.

About Humanforce 

Humanforce is the best-in-one platform for frontline and flexible workforces, offering a truly employee centred, intelligent and compliant human capital management (HCM) suite – without compromise. Founded in 2002, Humanforce has a 2300+ customer base and over half a million users worldwide. Today, we have offices across Australia, New Zealand, the US, and the UK. 

Our vision is to make work easier and life better by focusing on the needs and fulfilment of frontline workers, and the efficiency and optimisation of businesses. 

To learn more about how Humanforce’s solution can help automate people processes in your business, please contact us.