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Health Care Matters is edited by Karen A. Hart, RN, BSN, and Sandy Haeberle, RN
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New Year's Resolution – Make Time for SWOTT!
The holidays are over, and for many, it is the beginning of a new fiscal year. Now is the time to sit back, let the holiday feast settle in your stomach, and take the time to evaluate the areas where you shine and those needing improvement in your facility. A review of both the internal and external environment of your facility is an important part of planning your 2006 strategy.
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RecruitingRx
Perhaps you seek relief from exorbitant search or contingency recruiting fees, or simply need to fill certain jobs in a flash. RecruitingRx, a new solution from the Hodes Health Care Division, can solve these issues and many others.
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New Year’s Resolution – Make Time for SWOTT! (continued)
To that end, a “SWOTT” analysis will provide much needed information toward enhancing your facility’s resources and capabilities to remain competitive in the health care arena. SWOTT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats and Trends. Strengths and weaknesses are found through an internal analysis, while opportunities, threats and trends are identified through an external analysis. SWOTT will help you reaffirm or even redefine the focus of your staff through an in-depth review. It can also isolate key issues and facilitate a strategic approach for future marketing ventures.
Strengths
A facility’s strengths are the resources and capabilities that set it apart from its competitors. They are its unique selling points; why an employee would choose it over another facility in the area. These attributes can include: being well regarded in the community; offering competitive compensation and benefits; having educational opportunities such as career ladders; using cutting-edge technology; receiving awards like Magnet (the highest level of recognition the American Nurses Credentialing Center accords to organized nursing services), and being recognized as a Top 100 Hospital. Unique strengths are wonderful marketing tools: Maximize them by including them in advertising campaigns and using them to build strong referral and retention programs.
Weaknesses
The absence of certain key attributes may be perceived by others in the community as a weakness. For example, if your facility does not offer tuition reimbursement, whereas other area facilities do, this could impede your ability to hire top talent. Other weaknesses can include: low salaries; disorganized orientations; a lack of benefits; few advancement opportunities or mentorship programs; poor management, and even a slow or disorganized hiring process. Facilities often don’t realize what their weaknesses are unless current and past employees are polled. It is only by consistently interviewing employees through post-hire or exit interviews that management will uncover what is causing high turnover in staff.
Opportunities
An external environmental analysis can reveal new opportunities for increasing your number of qualified applicants and, thus, increasing your return on investment. Those opportunities can include harnessing new technologies, for example, to help you reach a greater percentage of your target audience, or eliminate time-draining excess paperwork and duplicated efforts in your human resources department. Other opportunities can include remaining current on changing visa regulations, or even targeting the increase of graduating students in certain fields. External opportunities are often overlooked by your competitors; now is the time to capitalize on the ones they are missing.
Threats
Changes in the external environment can also present threats to your facility. It is vital to remain current on emerging trends so you can be prepared. Examples of external threats to a facility can include a new competitor in your neighborhood, or a current competitor obtaining a new piece of cutting-edge technology. Other threats can include a competitor hiring and marketing a world-renowned physician; new employment regulations, or even a catastrophic world event that can affect hiring. For example, the events of September 11, 2001 created stricter visa controls and longer waits for working visas. Due to this tragedy, the military also began offering stronger re-enlistment bonuses and pulling back on “early outs”. As a result, fewer experienced military personnel with medical backgrounds are exiting into the civilian work arena. And, immediately after 9/11, trends showed that fewer Americans were willing to move away from their family units for a new job.
Trends
Trends map a change of data over time. For example, people are always watching and discussing upward trends in the stock market. Trends in health care are much the same. Using trend analysis, we are able to learn from our past endeavors and, hopefully, create a stronger future in doing so.
One specific trend noted in health care is the decrease in allied health training programs. A study done in 2004 by the American Medical Association, FutureScan, revealed a 60 percent fall-off since 1985 in clinical laboratory programs, a 30 percent drop in nuclear medicine therapy programs, a 21 percent reduction in students in radiographer programs, and a whopping 67 percent drop in respiratory therapy programs. Such trends indicate that if we don’t work to remedy the problem of fewer training programs, we will find ourselves without staff. This predicament will only be exacerbated by the baby boomers, a generation that has begun to retire from the health care professions.
Analysis results
Now that you’ve completed your research and have uncovered your facility’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats and trends, what can you do with this information? You now have a better understanding of your organization and can thus strategically apply this knowledge to your overall brand image. Your advertising will better represent who you are, and, as a result, attract more appropriate applicants. You now also have better insight into changes you may want to affect in your organization. For example, let’s say you have learned that you are behind the curve in advancement opportunities. You can now harness that information, transforming this weakness into a positive by creating new internal programs for current staff.
By collecting this data, you are able to benchmark your strengths and build from this information year after year. A SWOTT analysis lends credence to your objectives, and the data collected is the measurement that upper management, or the CEO, CFO and COO of your facility, needs to have before approving new endeavors.
A thorough analysis of your facility, and that of your competitors, takes time. We can help you. If you have questions, or are looking for assistance, contact your Hodes representative. Or, you can contact the Hodes Health Care Division directly at 800.582.4668, or via e-mail at healthcare@hodes.com.
RecruitingRx
RecruitingRx places an experienced health care recruiter in your staffing department. That professional can then tackle numerous recruiting tasks for you, from sourcing, screening and interviewing, through conducting background checks and extending offers. With the RecruitingRx solution, we can also: assess your recruiting process and make recommended improvements; affect change implementation; lend technologies support, and conduct metrics benchmarking.
For more information, please contact Steve Mitchell, vice president, Hodes Health Care Division, at 978.263.6695 or via e-mail at sgmitchell@hodes.com.
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