Asante turns its focus to recruiting and retaining employees

As Asante closes out an unprecedented year, leaders are now focusing on recruiting and retaining its workforce. The system currently has a record 926-plus open positions and a job vacancy rate of 13.7%.

Although the statewide vaccination mandate resulted in more than 200 staff departures and 345 exemption leaves, Asante and other health care organizations were struggling to fill open positions even before the pandemic struck.

Asante has hired 356 new employees in just the past two months. But recruiters’ work is just beginning. To help bring on new employees quickly, Human Resources and Talent Acquisition are using new strategies. These include:

• Adding the job vacancy rate to the FY 2022 Balanced Scorecard. This ensures that hiring and retention are at the forefront of Asante’s performance measures.
• Hiring an additional recruiter.
• Boosting the number of new-employee orientations to 40 in 2022 — 10 more than in past years. This helps speed the on-boarding process.
• Expanding the number of positions with referral bonuses. Employees who refer a friend or acquaintance and that person is hired could receive a referral bonus of $200 or even $2,000. You can find the list of bonus-eligible positions here.
• Establishing a systemwide employee retention team with members from HR and other key departments. The 17-member group will develop retention strategies to reduce turnover, determine workforce needs and improve engagement.
• Advertising Asante as a great place to work on billboards, newspapers and online.
• Hiring a full-time coordinator to help find housing for employees hired from outside the area.

Filling open clinical positions is our first priority. Anne Hansen, director of Nursing and Professional Development, offers an extensive list of tactics to recruit more clinical staff. For these and other positions, all Asante employees can help get the word out by posting job openings on their LinkedIn or other social media pages.