Vicious – adj. “to be deliberately cruel”

Hiring has become a vicious cycle–especially as we willingly give away our future.

All of us have experienced this negative feedback loop: one person quits, so the remaining team members work longer hours and more shifts to pick up the slack. This leads to frustration, burnout and more resignations. The team and their managers then must take on more shifts and subsequently, longer hours to fill the gap, which compounds frustrations and eventually leads to more resignations.

Layer on anxiety and concern for the wellbeing of others in the world around them, and it’s a recipe for disaster. Health care workers have especially strong feelings around “changing safety protocols, low pay and a general sense of being disposable.” The antidote to a sense of being disposable? Feeling valued and cared for, with a bit of added personalized attention. This is no doubt exactly what your organization says it strives to offer to your residents, clients or patients–does this sound all too familiar?

In his book The Dip best-selling author, business and social commentator Seth Godin highlights the concept of knowing when to quit, and when to stick with solving a problem. He asks,  “If we audited your day in six-minute increments, what would we find?” This question challenges us to assess the best use of time within our current processes, or to rethink new answers to solving critical challenges.

The take home point? “Quit the wrong stuff. Stick with the right stuff. Have the guts to do one or the other.” When it comes to hiring managers filling high turnover frontline roles, now is the time. Quit wasting their daily effort and emotional energy chasing applicants, who then no-show for interviews, or don’t respond after an offer is made. Worse yet after spending valuable resources, many fail to show up for day-one on the job. Is there any more critical “right stuff” for our focus today than solving for staffing in the Care Economy?

Godin’s summary: ”When we give away our day, we give away our future.”

If retention and recruitment are two sides of the same coin, how does management best prioritize? Don’t give away your future time on recruitment that would be better spent on retention of quality candidates. Retention efforts require time and energy, which are locked in a constant struggle for time spent by the same people needing to recruit new candidates or backfilling vacated positions.

Savvy leaders who have dedicated themselves to providing life sustaining and life saving care to millions every year, owe it to their communities to learn this valuable lesson of how to “quit the wrong stuff.”

There are three important outcomes that Care Economy leaders gain with solutions which serve to “Quit” repeating the same old habits.

#1) Quit wasting valuable time spent on recruiting and recapture that time to allow a focus on a hiring manager’s day job. With repetitive tasks of recruiting now under control, these managers get the payoff of more time to engage with new hires to reduce turnover.

#2) Quit ignoring the realities of recruitment waste that are lost six minutes at a time, in every hour of every day.

#3) Quit enabling the deliberately cruel and vicious cycle where we began this discussion.

Seems there’s never been a better time to Quit!