The Brave New World of Successful Recruitment

Australia’s health care and support sector, consistently evolving and adapting to socio-economic and funding shifts, has seen significant transformations in the recruitment strategies implemented by Allied Health Business Owners. As we well know, doing the same old thing will bring you the same old results and in this case will leave you unable to expand your clinical team and therefore limit your ability to share your allied health magic.

Values and Behaviour Based Attributes

While technical competencies remain essential, there is a growing emphasis on matching candidates to the organizations’ values and culture. Allied Health Business Owners must have their vision, mission and values clearly articulated, documented and ideally proven in order to attract and effectively interview for a compatible new team mate. If we think from a candidates perspective – how easily is it to access meaningful and compelling information about the look and feel of your organization, its culture and team happiness and practical examples of how the team live and breath the values?

Digital Recruitment Platforms

I am afraid to say that nowadays “Putting an ad up” is just one tiny drop in the ocean of recruitment success. It’s time to action the tens of other tactics you will need in play to build the clinical team you need; sophisticated web pages, social media post content, team testimonials, video, paid adverts and conversations, along with many, many, many conversations online and in-person. Now is when you need to show up online daily, messaging who you are, what you do and why it matters in order to build your network and start conversations.

Many of you have heard me say previously – You Can’t Sell A Secret.

Are you ready to go?

Graduate Clinicians Embraced.

Without a doubt, some clinical roles will require experience. However there is currently significant appetite for early career clinicians. Hooray! It’s about time, I am a huge fan of graduate therapists and the urgent need to support their professional pathways to ensure sustainability. We are witnessing graduate programs a-plenty and encourage this. The next step though, is to prove to the market that your graduate program works. Candidates have many to choose from so why should they pick yours and how will they know that it will work for them?

Diverse Working Arrangements

Gone are the days when permanent full-time positions were the primary offering. Today there’s a surge in part-time, casual, remote and hybrid positions, all with flexible work arrangements and increasingly all wrapped up in customised employment packages. How willing are you to flex to what candidates request whilst ensuring your business needs are met? It takes creativity and authentic negotiating skills but we are seeing innovation and creativity working really well. Essentiall, this is the golden ticket to being an employer of choice

Professional Development Forever

Organisations that demonstrate a commitment to ongoing training and upskilling not only attract top clinical talent but also ensure their team stay with them for longer and remain at the forefront of industry advancements. Generous training budgets, paid study days, clear clinical coaching and line management processes, individual and team wide learning and collaborating opportunities are all minimal expectations. Once again, how clear are you with what’s on offer and how do you message this outwards?

Employer Brand and Reputation

Just as you invest in branding for your clients, Allied Health Businesses are recognizing the need for employer branding to attract employee candidates. This entails a lot… a future blog perhaps? Let’s think about creating strategic and compelling content that outlines why your workplace stands out. We have some very cool tools for this that our members love and time after time, we have seen it work. This is the moment you showcase your culture, facilities, employee experience, client success stories and more to attract the hearts and minds of your future team. Yes, its time to self-promote your business in all the best ways – how will you do this?

Movement in the Sector

Workforce challenges have been around for a while now, however post-pandemic there is movement between jobs and trends that are new. The candidate market is savvy, selective and confidently request what they want. As business owners will you stick to your old-school guns or reposition yourself as contemporary and competitive employers.

As an Allied Health Business Coach I emphasise the need to not only understand these trends but to release historical expectations and tactics in order to strategically and assertively position yourself in the market as a destination Employer.