As you’ll have seen from our recent blogs on healthcare tech, the industry is booming and startups are taking full advantage. But, as with tech startups in any industry, growing pains are common, especially when it comes to your employees. This week, we’re looking at the top seven people challenges we’re seeing in healthcare startups, and how you should go about solving them.
Engagement has topped the polls as the biggest employment challenge this year, with only 13% of employees feeling engaged at work. But with engagement being key to employee performance, innovation and retention, how do you fix the problem with a small startup budget and no room for a slide like Google?
First, conduct an anonymous employee engagement survey to determine what’s driving disengagement. Next, implement initiatives to increase engagement such as sharing the company vision and performance, encouraging two-way communication and giving employees more autonomy. Finally, ensure that engagement is a long-term strategy by hiring and developing great people managers and regularly checking in with your employees.
As your healthcare startup expands and your team grows with it, some employees might fall into unexpected managerial roles. This often happens when key members of staff are promoted to lead a team based on longevity of service or technical skills, rather than their people skills.
This can result in managers not knowing how to manage or get the best out of their team. To overcome this, you need to develop your managers into leaders, and this requires leader development. Leadership development comes in all shapes and sizes – from professional courses and workshops to simple coaching and mentoring. The most material aspect is that your managers are supported in their growth and shown how to manage a team.
Lone wolves aren’t uncommon in the healthcare tech scene, where working alone can result in significant technological advances and achievements. But teamwork is essential for employee morale, innovation and collaboration, so how do you manage a lone wolf without frustrating your team or impacting company performance?
Firstly, don’t assume that having a lone wolf on your team is a bad thing. These employees are often incredibly productive and talented, meaning that you shouldn’t discount them or overlook them when assigning tasks. Secondly, speak to them. It’s important that you understand their preferred style of working and team interaction, and that they understand how much freedom they have to work alone and when they’re required to be more of a team player. It involves managing expectations on both sides.
You found, attracted and recruited the best talent for the position, but they’re six months into the job, and they’re not performing. What went wrong? In the tech industry, it’s easy to get caught up in recruiting the right skills for the role, without preparing that employee for the role.
Your onboarding process is as critical as your recruitment process. No matter how much you all think a new employee can hit the ground running, without the necessary introduction to the company, the vision, the position and how everything clicks together, they’re unlikely to perform at full capacity. Ensure that every new hire goes through a minimum two-week induction process that brings them up-to-speed.
The war for talent is on, yet the budget for skills and experience is lacking. Being unable to afford the healthcare tech talent required is a common challenge we hear at Evolution. However, there are ways to stretch your budget without compromising on future performance.
To begin with, reassess the job requirements to determine what skills are needed and what skills can be taught on the job. Up and coming IT professionals are often attracted more by the developmental opportunities ahead than the salary on offer. Next, consider offering employee benefits that mean more than a high salary, such as remote working or overseas travel. Finally, don’t discount transferable skills. Just because someone hasn’t worked in the healthcare industry before, doesn’t mean that their skills or experience are irrelevant.
Recruitment is time-intensive, and without the required skills and resources can be incredibly tricky too. If you’re struggling to hire technical staff using in-house recruitment methods, consider partnering with an IT recruitment company. By working with specialists in the healthcare tech field, you can significantly reduce the time it takes to recruit and gain access to passive talent pools for the best talent.
In addition, if you’re struggling to attract the team that you want, a recruitment agency can help you to build a reputable and attractive employer brand that draws even the most elusive of talent to your vacancies.
The final, but often most distressing people problem of healthcare companies is employee attrition. With hectic workloads, unpredictable futures, small budgets and plenty of growing pain, retaining talented IT professionals can be challenging. But replacing that talent is time and expense that you don’t need.
Enhance your ability to retain employees by offering meaningful benefits such as flexible working, regularly benchmarking your salaries using a 2019 Salary Guide, running one-to-ones and team meetings to identify employee unhappiness early, and complying with employment regulations and best practice by using a HR consultant to advise.
People problems are problems in businesses of all sizes and in all industries. But, with the right attitude, support and partners, overcoming these problems and becoming an employer of choice is simple.
To find out how Evolution Recruitment Solutions can help you to find, attract and retain the right team for your startup, contact us today.
