Has Covid-19 changed healthcare recruitment?

Shockwaves from the impact of Covid-19 are still being felt throughout the world. Even as we attempt to rebuild crucial frontline services and return to a more normal way of life, we remain under threat from the second wave of the virus.

Not only have our essential health and social care services been drastically depleted since the onset of the pandemic - with staff disproportionately affected by the virus and demand for services greater than ever before - they have also had to respond to ongoing challenges to the way that services are delivered; not just in terms of implementing social distancing measures, but also in quite significant changes to the way in which healthcare advice and treatment is administered. This can be seen from the wide closure of GP surgeries - for all but emergency cases - and the significant augmentation of NHS111 and telehealth services.‍

What does this mean for healthcare recruitment?‍

Despite a general relaxation of the strict lockdown measures seen at the beginning of the pandemic, there are still restrictions on face-to-face meetings and travel, and this reality is unlikely to change. Healthcare providers will need to adapt traditional recruitment protocols in order to prioritise staff safety and wellbeing, whilst at the same time ensuring that vacant positions are filled as quickly as possible. 

Increasingly, healthcare recruiters are pivoting to facilitate the virtual recruitment of new candidates, with many recruiters now carrying out the initial screening stages entirely remotely. Some have extended this to include innovative measures such as virtual tours of their facilities, which can be useful to generate more interest among candidates and make the process feel more personal. 

Whatever the future holds, it’s certain that most providers are going to need support when it comes to navigating a post-Covid world. Many of the changes to the way we work could be here to stay, particularly those which have helped our health services to run more efficiently whilst reducing the need for one-to-one contact between clinical staff and patients.

It’s time to get ahead of the curve.

If you’re a healthcare provider or recruiter in need of a little advice then get in touch to find out more about how Credentially’s software platform can help you do just that.

Credentially’s mission is to save millions of hours across healthcare by automating hiring, onboarding and compliance processes.  Empowering health providers to seamlessly allow movement of healthcare staff between employers is our ultimate vision.

Automating recruitment, onboarding and ongoing compliance of healthcare staff with powerful AI and automation is what we do.‍

Driving better value for the NHS and delivering system wide improvements is why we do what we do‍

“With over 1,300 staff who were all mobilised to work from home within 24 hours of lockdown, SCW had some significant difficulties with undertaking ID checks even though the face to face verification requirement was relaxed. It became increasingly clear, as the number of GP applications increased, that our reliance on staff working from home, unreliable internet connections, restricted shared drives and email volumes meant we had real difficulty in undertaking the essential ID checks.” - Elspeth Griffiths, Director of HR at NHS South Central and West CSU / CCAS

If you’re a healthcare provider or recruiter in need of a little bit of advice, then get in touch to find out more about how Credentially’s software platform can help you do just that.