The following is a post by Vishal Gandhi, CEO of ClinicSpectrum as part of the Cost Effective Healthcare Workflow Series of blog posts. Follow and engage with him on Twitter @ClinicSpectrum and @csvishal2222.
When managing a healthcare organization, the hardest part for most leaders is managing the people involved in the practice. This shouldn’t be a surprise since “getting the right people on the bus” has always been the challenge of any successful business. Making sure you hire the right people and then ensuring those people are working at maximum efficiency often determines the success of your organization.
While we can’t quite ask Siri to take care of managing our staff for us, technology solutions can help us better manage the process of hiring the right people and managing staff productivity.
Let’s first talk about the process most healthcare organizations use to hire and on-board new staff. The reality is that the majority don’t have a well defined process. Some well organized managers do have a consistent hiring and on-boarding process, but most are just trying to keep their head above water as they bring on new people. This inconsistency can lead to hiring the wrong person and possibly even major legal consequences.
By implementing an HR management solution like we created with HRMSpectrum, it forces your organization to put some structure into your hiring process. All applicants participate in the same application process. The system allows the applicant to schedule the interview themselves. It even supports telephone, video, or in-person interviews. Could you do this with a mix of spreadsheets and other technology? Absolutely, but it can get messy very quickly. However, regardless of what technology you use, spending the time to create a well defined process is enormously valuable.
Plus, a proper HR management solution supports not only the application and interview process, but also tracks the employee as they get on-boarded with the organization. This can include such features as document signing, employee training and evaluation, employee clocking and attendance management, and performance appraisals and incentives to name a few. All of this ensures consistency and uniformity in the hiring and on-boarding process.
Once you’ve hired the right people and on-boarded them into the organization, how do you ensure that your employees are working productively? In healthcare, we know how productive a doctor is being since we can see how many patients he has on his schedule. With a productivity solution like our ProductivitySpectrum you can easily track and manage the rest of your employees’ productivity. That includes things like benchmarking and performance analysis, but also includes important time clock functionality as well. Any productivity solution you use should also prevent time spent on non-productive web browsing and social interaction online.
There’s nothing more powerful in an organization than to reward your staff for the work they do. By tracking their productivity you can identify and reward high performing individuals in your organization. Yes, that also means you’re going to find lower performing individuals. However, by tracking productivity you have the hard data to illustrate and inspire a low performing individual to improve their performance. Performance evaluations based on data are better for everyone involved.
No doubt there’s a lot more to managing people in an organization than just using the right technology. However, technology can assist managers in both the hiring and productivity tracking process. It can provide uniformity and raw data to help a manager better manage their staff. What HR and productivity management solutions are you seeing and using in your organization? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.
The Cost Effective Healthcare Workflow Series of blog posts is sponsored by ClinicSpectrum, a leading provider of workflow automation solutions for healthcare. ClinicSpectrum offers a full HR hiring and on-boarding solution called HRMSpectrum. For managing staff productivity check out ClinicSpectrum’s ProductivitySpectrum solution. Connect with Clinic Spectrum on social media: @ClinicSpectrum or at Booth 1270 at HIMSS 2016..
