Dear Healthcare Facilities… (What Your Staffing Agency Wants You to Know)
For almost two decades we’ve been staffing nurses and other healthcare professionals at facilities across the country. We’ve seen a thing or two that we want to address head-on to give facilities more insight into how we work and peace of mind. So whether you’ve been working with a staffing agency for years, or you’re considering using one for the very first time, here’s what your staffing agency wants you to know.
No-Call/No-Shows Hurt Us Too
We understand that life happens and sometimes last minute changes must be made. However, employees that frequently don’t show up for work without notice can significantly impact both quality of care and team morale at the facility.
We only want to hire qualified and dependable healthcare staff – anything less will harm our reputation as a staffing agency and our relationships with our clients. It’s not enough for a staffing agency to have hundreds or thousands of nurses in their network, they need to be vetted using comprehensive pre-employment screening processes that includes competency tests, certification verifications, background checks, drug screenings, two-step PPD and HIPAA and OSHA training.
Another major aspect to consider is that some agencies establish mandatory job minimums which nurses must meet. In order to be kept on at some agencies, employees have to take a certain number of shifts or work a certain number of hours per month. In an industry where burnout is a concern, we don’t want to force our nurses to take on unnecessary work. If nurses have complete control over their schedules and the freedom to work as much or little as they want, they are less likely to accept shifts just to meet minimums imposed by an agency only to then not show up when needed the most.
We Are NOT Trying to Poach Your Staff
Occasionally we may see hesitations from hiring managers to use nurses provided from a staffing agency because of a fear that those nurses will then poach top employees to join the staffing agency and ultimately quit their jobs. This is absolutely not our goal when we send employees to facilities!
It’s one thing if a nurse independently learns about and decides to sign up for a staffing agency to pick up more shifts, but it’s quite another for an agency to purposefully send someone in to recruit nurses away from jobs they like and enjoy doing.
It’s our job to help facilities by filling open shifts. We would never want to do something to burn a bridge or sabotage our relationship with a client.
We’re Constantly Onboarding New Nurses
There are occasions when a facility needs a shift filled but an agency doesn’t have an available nurse to cover. This can be caused by a number of different circumstances, with the top two most frequent being:
- The agency may not have anyone who meets the facility’s requirements in that geographical location at the time of need.
- The agency has qualified nurses in their location, but they are already on assignment or are not currently available to accept more work.
The important thing to remember in these situations is that agencies are constantly recruiting new employees. Just because a staffing agency is unable to fill one shift does not mean they will never be able to help that facility. The more an agency’s network grows – both in quantity of healthcare professionals in their network and in geographic locations it covers – the more likely it will be able to help staff open shifts.
We Are Here to Help!
The most important thing that we want facilities to know is that we are here to help you!
Yes, the most common way facilities use a staffing agency is to fill short-term and long-term placements. However, we’ve also been able to help facilities in other ways, including on-site training. Facilities will work with us to temporarily bring on qualified and experienced nurses to train or mentor new staff. So, whether it’s staffing an open shift to something a bit more out-of-the-box, we will do what we can to ensure your staffing needs are taken care of.
