In an era of would-be hires “ghosting” recruiters, Health Dimensions Group extended 189 offers last month and locked up contracts for 150 new workers — and got all of those new workers to the job on day one.
The secret to attracting strong nursing and leadership candidates to the application process and delivering a high share of them to nursing homes clamoring to fill vacancies isn’t really that much of a secret, believes Sarah Friede, senior vice president of recruitment services for the Minnesota-based HDG.
Today, more than ever, she said, it’s all about the individual offer.
A monthly car allowance? A discount on nearby apartments? A place to stay weeknights if they’re traveling farther from home than they wanted for a particular job? All of those are real fringe benefits Friede has seen work for providers, including HDG-managed facilities and external clients, to land their top candidates.
“There is not this one-size-fits-all approach,” Friede told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News. “You have to listen to your employees and listen to what’s important to them. Every single community is a little bit different. Someone might be motivated by health benefits. Someone may be motivated by just base compensation; they don’t need the health benefits because their spouse has it but they want higher compensation. They might want bonus incentives.”
HDG now manages 29 senior living and skilled nursing properties in eight states, and its consulting arm offers extensive leadership or full-house recruitment for clients nationwide. Friede says her experiences show this is not the time to stick with what used to work, or to cling to a strategy that might work in one market but has proven unsuccessful in another.
Keeping a deep talent pool at the ready, committing resources to refilling that pool and following cues from candidates are a few of the management company’s key philosophies when it comes to hiring. Its recruiters don’t quickly reject candidates who want more money than budgeted, nor do they cast out applicants seeking flexibility.
Finding what works
Teaching clients to embrace those changes has been a core tenet of the last few years, Friede said. It no longer works for providers to hire with a mindset of, “This is the way we’ve always done it so we can’t change,” she explained.
Administrators, after all, are basically entrepreneurs, tasked with growing a business and managing day-to-day operations, she observed. Offering higher pay for someone who can build referral partnerships or carry out other identified company-wide initiatives could pay for itself.
Some are embracing the shift in mindset.
“We see a lot of individualized offers, even with the clients that we are dealing with, not just HDG and our managed buildings,” Friede said. “We’ve got some groups that come in and purchase nursing homes here in Minnesota and they’re from the East Coast and they’re used to paying higher wages. They’re like, ‘Look, we want the best and the brightest talent and we don’t really care what we’re going to pay. Obviously, we have a price ceiling but we want the best and brightest talent and we’re willing to pay top dollar for it.’
“They’ll recruit based off of the person and their skill sets and fit for that position versus, fitting them in a box of your compensation is $150,000, or no, our budget’s at $120,000. We can’t even talk to you. So they’re willing to throw in anything for the leadership-level positions, who run the building and who, ultimately, are running your business.”
Whether finalizing a compensation plan or working out a flexible schedule, providers need to give prospective leaders the trust their position deserves, she said. When pay alone may not get someone over the finish line, respecting and addressing an individual’s other needs can be the sign of partnership to come that gets a deal done.
Staffing shortages aren’t new in the 2020s, she reminded, but the added attention the pandemic brought to work-life balance is here to stay. Friede started her career in senior living and care at age 16, earned a degree in healthcare management and worked as an executive director for Brookdale before joining human resources at HDG in 2017.
“I’ve always had staffing as part of my position, no matter what role I was in. I’ve seen it all. … This isn’t an issue that we’ve not dealt with before over the past, I’d say, two decades in this industry,” she said. “I think we have to think of better ways to hire staff. If you’ve got a student that can come in for three or four hours, they can’t do the whole shift, but they can do a partial, figure out how to make that work.
“The mindset of we have to have a DON working five days a week, 40 hours a week in the building, there are some clients that have made this work where they can do four days a week and have a day of office work that’s remote. That gives them some of that life balance and that ability for them to feel like they can unplug and focus on their admin and their data entry stuff … or make phone calls to family members.”
Central recruiting
Of course, providers can’t hire the right candidates if the right applications don’t come across their desks.
HDG has used a centralized approach to hiring for the last seven years, following a model developed by Friede. It was a way to give time back to building leaders, who were consumed by filling multiple positions, with some facilities facing 20 or more openings at a time since 2020. That’s far beyond the company goal of five or fewer openings.
“There would be an executive director or somebody in the community doing recruiting, but it’s not working because they’re not actively recruiting,” Friede recalled. “They post the position. They pray on it. Nobody applies. And then we wonder why we’re spending $100,000 in agency because we haven’t filled the positions that need to be filled.”
Working with leaders of their managed communities, 11 staff members in Friede’s division handle advertising and recruiting for specific leadership roles including regional or corporate positions. HDG also offers a centralized recruiting package to clients, in which they will staff all building-level roles from dining up and through DONs.
She said building leaders “craved” the program, which screens talent, follows up and delivers interview subjects on site and then closes the deal with paperwork and compliance.
A big factor in making it work? Having recruiters who are constantly sourcing talent in various markets, whether that means developing relationships with local schools, tracking competitors’ talent or reaching out to retirees. They also work to understand what strategies work where, whether it’s offering more pay in urban markets or offering transportation allowances to drive to rural sites.
“We have loyalty in our recruiters. They understand the market and the clients and the community that they’re dealing with. That has been our success: the loyalty and the tenure in our recruiting team to keep an active pipeline of candidates.”
