How to Attract and Retain Healthcare Tech Talent

With companies across all industries searching for tech talent to fuel innovation and digital transformation, attracting and retaining skilled IT talent is a major challenge for every company including healthcare enterprises.

Healthcare organizations are increasingly realizing that to attract and retain tech talent they need to do more than offer attractive compensation. Today, attracting and retaining IT talent requires new strategies for recruiting this talent and a focus on providing an employee experience that meets this cohort’s evolving expectations and priorities.

Here are some of the ways healthcare organizations can adapt their recruiting and employee experience strategies to successfully find and retain top IT talent.

Attract

Attracting tech talent in the healthcare industry requires a strategic approach that leverages specialized workforce platforms built from the ground up to provide access to a wider pool of talent and a deep bench of on-demand IT professionals.

Leveraging technology and the contingent workforce in this way, healthcare organizations can attract the top IT talent they need when they need it.

Leverage technology

Traditional recruiting methods are longer the best method for managing the recruitment process and identifying the most qualified candidates. Specialized healthcare IT workforce platforms like Abra are revolutionizing recruiting, giving healthcare companies the competitive edge in securing high demand IT talent.

This technology creates a cost-effective way to find candidates, narrow searches, and onboard new employees. Designed to streamline the process of identifying and engaging tech talent with the right skills and qualifications, the technology makes the recruiting process more efficient and effective.

Hire Contractors

IT projects in healthcare organizations are always evolving, creating a need for a pool of on-demand talent. As such, hiring full time employees, which can be a lengthy process, does not meet the need for quickly bringing in the talent needed to advance fast turnaround, mission-critical projects.

Hiring talent on a contract basis is faster, easier and, in many cases, more cost effective. This hiring strategy allows healthcare organizations to scale IT talent resources up or down according to their needs. Contractors can be quickly onboarded and possess the skills and experience needed to jump right into a project to keep productivity up and projects on track.

Retain

After finding and hiring the right talent, the next challenge for healthcare organizations is retaining skilled IT talent in the fast-paced tech industry which sees a lot of job changing. According to recent McKinsey Global Institute research, tech workers change roles every 2.7 years which compares to 3.2 years for workers in other professions.

To retain valuable IT talent, healthcare organizations should focus on delivering an employee experience that includes professional development, flexible working and access to technology.

Professional development

Research from McKinsey reveals that career development and advancement potential are now “on par with compensation as top factors influencing job-related decisions for workers in the digital space”.

Healthcare enterprises that offer training and continuous learning programs are more likely to retain tech talent who value opportunities to develop their skills and keep up to date with ever evolving advancements in healthcare technology.

Internal training, paid certifications, mentorships, workshops and conferences are just some of the ways healthcare enterprises can help employees gain the skills and experience to take their careers to the next level.

Flexible working

Most IT employees want job flexibility and the ability to work remotely. A study by Deloitte found that “offering flexible/hybrid work environments was viewed as the top way to retain high-performing tech talent—and tech professionals have come to expect it.” Additionally, a Harvard Business Review study found that 46% of tech employees would consider leaving an organization that stopped offering the flexibility to work remotely.

IT professionals clearly prefer flexible working arrangements that support work-life balance and IT roles are well suited to remote and hybrid working models.

Healthcare organizations that adopt flexible working policies are better positioned to retain tech talent and reap the added benefits of increased employee engagement, satisfaction and productivity.

Access to technology

Providing access to cutting edge technology is another way healthcare enterprises can retain tech talent. Healthcare IT professionals want to work with technology that builds their skills and keeps them interested.

Investing in the latest platforms, tools, and technologies creates an environment of innovation that can help IT employees do their jobs more effectively and avoid burn out.

McKinsey notes, that “it is virtually impossible to imagine a business today succeeding without a strong base of tech talent. Only by accepting that overriding reality and making an all-out push to acquire the right tech talent can companies expect to capture the value that digital promises.”

Today, acquiring and retaining the right tech talent requires healthcare organizations to leverage technology and contingent hiring in their recruitment strategies and align with evolving tech talent expectations for an employee experience that includes professional development, flexible working and access to technology.

If you haven't yet, sign-up for a demo of the Abra platform today. Let us show you the platform that help you attract and retain talent while saving on the cost to employ contractors.