When it comes to recruiting healthcare employees, content marketing might not be at the top of the list of go-to tactics. Learn why it should be.
The healthcare worker shortage is a nationwide topic. And it’s guaranteed your hiring managers are feeling the effects. A few facts that show just how critical this problem could become:
- 2.3 million new healthcare workers need to be hired by 2025 to provide adequate care, according to a report from professional services firm Mercer
- By 2032, the United States will face a shortage of nearly 122,000 physicians, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges
- One million registered nurses (RNs) will retire by 2030, according to the Journal of Nursing Regulation
- Shortages RNs will be worst in the southern and western parts of the United States, according to the American Journal of Medical Quality
As a marketer, you’re probably less involved in helping human resources compared with other needs, like promoting patient experience and medical services. But your marketing tactics are uniquely able to help HR recruit the employees that have such a huge impact on patient experience and access to care at your organization. Enter content marketing.
Check out how this hospital blog transitions to lifestyle site focused on health, wellness, and patient stories
Believe it or not, the right mix of content marketing stories can help fill HR’s talent pipeline. Here are seven ways you can leverage your content marketing to support hiring efforts.
1. Showcase your workplace culture
Did your pulmonology department participate in a local 5K race? Did your pediatric department host a trunk-or-treat (a Halloween trick-or-treat event) in your hospital parking ramp?
Sharing your culture and events through content marketing is a great way to draw in job-seekers and let them know what it’s like to be an employee at your organization.
2. Spotlight employee achievements
Whether it’s a nurse winning a Daisy Award, a receptionist hitting a milestone anniversary with the organization, or one of your doctors completing groundbreaking research, your employees do amazing things. Take time to recognize those achievements — to not only show off your impressive organization, but also to demonstrate to job-seekers how much you value employee contributions.
A few ways to do this could include:
- Feature stories about your staff’s accomplishments
- Video interviews with employees and their teams
- Video events, like Facebook Live events
3. Share your patients’ perspectives
Your patients have a lot of great things to say about what you do and how you do it. Their stories often focus on the interactions they had with members of their care teams. So invite patient input, and share their experiences via a feature story, video, or audio. You can even welcome them to write their own story and submit it online to share in your content marketing.
4. Feature your forward-thinking leadership
Sometimes an executive leadership team can seem inaccessible to both the public and your staff. Try a quick survey or a brief, five-question interview as an innovative, interesting way to gather and share fun facts. These stories are easy to share on your social channels, too, as a way to showcase how your leaders shape your organization’s culture and mission.
5. Invite new employees to center stage
Bringing on new talent to your organization is worth celebrating. Interview or survey new employees to get to know them, their roles, their backgrounds, and their interests, so people inside and outside the organization can get familiar with your growing pool of patient-focused talent.
6. Showcase diverse roles and experiences
There is more than one way to work in healthcare. Share stories about internships and other career-building opportunities for students. Showcase nonclinical staff and describe how they support the culture and the experience of patients and staff.
Your content marketing efforts don’t have to be limited to your clinical roles, patients and candidates alike can find value in these stories. Showing that you value all your employees could be a differentiator for potential employees who work in non-clinical capacities.
7. Create an email segment just for potential employees
If you’re using email as part of your content marketing mix, consider creating a list just for job-seekers. Let them sign up and opt-in for career-focused content on your site and send them relevant career articles and job postings so you’re engaging with them before they even apply. This also helps you learn what types of content are most meaningful to your job-seekers.
But First, Strategize
The careers section landing page is often the most-visited page on a healthcare website. Capture this audience by integrating job- and culture-related content marketing articles into your foundational career pages. This helps job-seekers see stories that are meaningful to them. In VitalSite, SmartPanels make this easy to do dynamically, but if you’re using a different CMS investigate what options you have to feature these stories.
Be strategic with HR-related content marketing. Plan stories and their use and distribution in an editorial calendar. This will help you keep the effort organized, fed, and up-to-date.
Although marketing doesn’t always get called on to help recruitment efforts, tactics like these might just be what fills that HR pipeline. And your amazing employees deliver amazing care, which is the story you’re out there telling every day.
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Feeling overwhelmed? Our content marketing experts would love to help you make the most of your efforts to fill that HR pipeline — reach out today.