Do You Need a Health Staffing Agency? The Pros & Cons

Staffing shortages are a major problem for healthcare organizations across the country. According to a survey from hospital staffing firm Leaders for Today, 31% of hiring managers can’t find enough candidates.

Working with a health staffing agency is a common way of solving this problem. It’s convenient, and it takes key hiring tasks off of your HR department’s plate. But is it right for your organization?

The Pros

Reduced Time-to-Hire

Staffing agencies take on your time-consuming hiring tasks, from sorting through resume submissions to checking references. They know how to do these things quickly and efficiently, without sacrificing candidate quality.

Also, healthcare staffing agencies have databases full of candidates. They’ve already gone through the process of screening out unqualified submissions, so they can match someone to your job faster.

Broader Talent Pools

Staffing agency databases are full of candidates with various qualifications. They’re in contact with healthcare professionals whom you might never even hear about otherwise.

Lower Up-front Costs

According to Glassdoor, U.S. employers spend an average of $4,000 and take 24 days to hire a new employee. Those costs include marketing the position, posting to job boards, and sending out recruiters.

Working with an agency means that you don’t have to take on these costs. Also, because agencies get the position filled sooner, they help you save on overtime costs.

The Cons

Potential Goodness-of-Fit Issues

An agency can work with the descriptors that you give them, but they don’t walk the halls of your office or medical center every day. They don’t know your staff personally and aren’t intimately acquainted with your workplace culture.

Less Control Over Recruiting

When you hand a job off to a staffing agency, you give them full control over the talent pool for that job. That can be a good thing, but you also don’t know where the agency is recruiting from and where their candidates were trained.

Other Options

Staffing agencies and traditional hiring processes aren’t the only options. There are multiple other convenient and effective ways to fill your vacancies.

1. Partner with a Quality Training School

The Leaders for Today survey showed that 24% of medical center HR leaders worry about job candidate qualifications. By partnering with a trusted training school like MedCerts, you can be sure that your new hires have the skills you need.

2. Offer Internal Training

You can fill openings faster and with less cost by hiring from within your organization. MedCerts can help by providing targeted training to people who are potentially great fits but not yet qualified for the job you have available.

3. Start an Apprenticeship Program

An apprentice is a student worker who takes on a position for less than the pay rate of a professional. You provide on-the-job training to bring them up to speed, and they apply their developing skills right away.

As a designated Apprenticeship Intermediary with the U.S. Department of Labor, MedCerts can help you to set up an approved program.

The Takeaway

Hiring a health staffing agency can save you money and time while connecting you to qualified candidates, but you have to give up a lot of control over the process.

A better solution is often to upskill your existing people and bring on student or newly qualified workers. MedCerts can help you structure those effective and cost-efficient pipelines.