In a healthcare era where speed to market is vital and the staffing shortage is imminent, the burden on healthcare recruiters is heavy. Between the Great Resignation, COVID-19 pandemic, and healthcare jobs on the rise, 61 percent of recruiters have reported an increase in stress at work. Here’s why recruiter burnout poses a threat to healthcare staffing needs and how to prevent it.
So, why is recruiting so stressful right now? Well, a lot of the stress can be contributed to the Great Resignation, or the record rate at which U.S. workers have quit their jobs starting in the spring of 2021. Employees are leaving their current workplaces due to feeling undervalued and overwhelmed with tasks. They’re searching for companies with more positive and ethical work environments, which puts additional pressure on recruiters. The Great Resignation is in full swing, creating an environment in which HR teams have to work harder to retain employees in order to avoid massive business costs and workflow interruptions.
At the same time, with every resignation comes another job to fill, resulting in a hefty workload and a looming threat of burnout for recruiters. In the face of high employee turnover rates, recruiters must increase efforts to attract talent, ensure a positive candidate experience to avoid candidate drop off, communicate explicit job expectations to avoid the Great Regret, all while meeting business needs and keeping current employees satisfied. This mountain of work only gets larger in the healthcare sphere, with a need to hire 1.1 million nurses by 2026 to fill resignations and meet staffing demands.
These daunting tasks and mounting pressure on recruiters are a recipe for burnout. Defined by the World Health Organization, burnout is a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that’s characterized by feelings of exhaustion or energy depletion, negative or cynical feelings related to a job, and reduced professional efficacy. Some burnout symptoms include:
Job burnout is a special type of work-related stress that can dramatically affect your physical and mental health. It’s a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that can make you feel unaccomplished and contribute to feelings of loss of personal identity. Not sure if you’re burnt out or just temporarily stressed? Check out this “Am I burnt out?” quiz to understand what you’re feeling.
When employees are burnt out, not only are they experiencing distress that affects their personal life, but their work performance is also being majorly affected. Burnout leads to recruiters failing to effectively do their job, leading to wrong hires and a never-ending cycle of turnover and more employee burnout.
Job seekers are on the hunt for companies with ethical practices, flexibility, and work-life balance. If these things aren’t reflected in the recruiters they’re interacting with, hiring such talent is impossible. Hiring teams need to be physically, mentally, and emotionally stable in order to combat staffing issues. During this war on talent, recruiters need to be supported and comfortable in their tasks to find new talent, so that they don't become burnt out. Here are five steps recruiters can take to prevent burnout.
Avoiding burnout begins with measurable and realistic goal setting. When you dive into a task without a thought-out strategy, you can be left with broken recruitment practices and challenges sourcing and hiring quality talent. Instead, recruiters should communicate with management about the realities of the hiring situation based on hiring needs, budget, and capacity. Together, you should develop solid plans and goals for the hiring process. Try setting SMART goals that have defined parameters and a clear time frame. Once these goals and plans are in place, recruiters have structure to guide their work and can identify what supports their overall goal and what doesn't, allowing them to protect their time and produce results.
The next step is to manage your time well, so you’re able to achieve your set goals. Here’s a few strategies you can try:
Find the strategy that works best for you and integrate it into your day-to-day life. Without proper time management, the day can fly by without priorities being accomplished, translating into longer workdays and an increased risk for burnout.
"It's about [being] efficient, effective, and productive and thinking about how we spend our time,” Julie D. Burch, author, training and development expert, and president of Julie Burch Speaks, said. “We do not find time in big chunks. We find it in small pieces—it's minutes here and minutes there."
When days are busy and workloads are heavy, it can be easy to think there’s not enough time to take breaks or time off. However, it’s more than important than ever to take breaks during these busy times. Research shows that sitting at a desk all day can negatively affect job satisfaction and increase work fatigue, both symptoms of burnout. One way to combat this is to invest in a standing desk or take frequent breaks to walk around, even if that’s just for five minutes every hour.
Additionally, the ability for recruiters to take time off is crucial to wellbeing and preventing burnout from setting in, especially during the Great Resignation. Yet 16 percent of workers haven’t taken any time off during the pandemic, and 14 percent took less time off than they did before. It’s critical that recruiters take time off, whether that’s a vacation or an occasional self-care day, and that they’re supported and encouraged to do so.
Another way recruiters can protect themselves from burnout is dedicating themselves to a renewed priority for work-life balance. A day in the life of a recruiter can be non-stop around the clock. Between reaching out to potential candidates, answering questions of those in the hiring stage, and juggling current job listings, a recruiter’s day can be long and the lines between work hours and personal hours are easily blurred.
During these busy times, the best thing recruiters can do is leave work at work. While the hours a recruiter works may vary, setting a schedule of work hours and personal hours and sticking to that schedule is critical. When you’re not at work, turn off work email and message notifications and communicate the hours you can be reached to candidates. You can never truly rest if you’re always “on call” and thinking about work.
While it may seem scary to not be available 24/7 to candidates, this strategy may actually help your hiring. When candidates observe recruiters with work-life balance, a value greatly sought after during the Great Resignation, they’ll feel more confident in your organization and may feel more strongly about working there. Prioritizing work-life balance helps put a stop to the vicious cycle of employee turnover and the effects that are feeding the Great Resignation.
However, all the breaks and time management strategies in the world can’t solve the problem of an impossible workload. For recruiters to truly avoid burnout, they need some of the manual work taken off their plates so they can focus on the decision-making their expertise requires. In fact, almost 45 percent of recruiters believe that AI and automation will improve their job roles and mitigate burnout.
For healthcare recruiters, Marketplace can be an incredible tool to take off some of the staffing stress. As an online job platform, Marketplace offers a pool of quality talent to agency partners. Travelers on Marketplace create customized profiles that house all their resume information, certifications, and job preferences in one place. This eliminates a bulk of work for recruiters and with Marketplace, you have qualified leads coming directly to you as travelers can easily apply to jobs at your agency on their own.
Plus, 89 percent of potential candidates are lost during an extensive hiring process. By cutting your recruiting time in half with Marketplace, you keep qualified candidates engaged while preserving the energy of your recruiters so they can spend their time making intelligent hiring decisions—not getting burnt out.
Recruiters need to be at the top of their game to tackle the Great Resignation and healthcare staffing shortages, but that’s only possible if they have a healthy work relationship. Being able to identify the signs of burnout and know the steps to put in place to prevent it will be key in sourcing the best talent during this time. The pressure Marketplace can take off recruiters is just one of the reasons healthcare agencies should be using a staffing platform, read more here!