As the competition for nursing and physician talent heats up, hospital employer branding is becoming more important than ever for healthcare recruiters. In fact, research from LinkedIn found that 83% of respondents agreed that employer brand has a huge impact on being able to hire top talent.1
However, employer branding is still an area that many hospitals neglect. Why? The concept is often misunderstood, and many recruitment and HR teams don’t have the resources to give it the attention it deserves. But, studies have found that organizations that invest in their employer brand see 50% more qualified applicants.2
The bottom line: Employer branding puts your hospital top of mind for the best nursing and physician candidates. Now that’s something your boss will love. In this article, we’ll walk you through exactly what hospital employer branding is and why your healthcare organization should prioritize it.
What Is a Hospital Employer Brand?
Your employer brand is a lot like your hospital’s general brand reputation; however, rather than focusing on your value proposition to patients (which is what your marketing team does), your employer brand speaks to your hospital’s reputation as a place to work.
In other words, employer branding is the image that current and potential employees have about what it’s like to work at your hospital. Their perception can be influenced by everything from the employee benefits to your healthcare organization’s workplace culture and environment.
Why Does Hospital Employer Branding Matter?
#1: Hospital Employer Branding Tells Your Story & Elicits Emotion
Have you ever watched a movie that brought you to tears or had you laughing out loud? Have you ever heard about a spooky coincidence that gave you goosebumps?
That’s what a good story does to us. It elicits a reaction and sticks in our memory. Successful employer branding allows you to do just that. You can tell the stories of your employees, letting candidates vicariously experience what it’s like to work at your hospital. They’ll instantly connect to your healthcare organization and feel like it’s a place they want to work.
#2: Hospital Employer Branding Gives Direction & Purpose
Employer branding is more than just your hospital’s logo, color palette, and typography; it’s the goals and meaning behind your healthcare organization. Successful hospitals have strong values, beliefs, and missions that drive their employees. For example, here’s Mayo Clinic’s mission and vision:
“Mission:
Inspiring hope and promoting health through integrated clinical practice, education and research.
Vision:
Transforming medicine to connect and cure as the global authority in the care of serious or complex disease.”
Why is it so important for hospitals to have powerful statements like these? Today’s healthcare workerMission:s want more than money; they want a place that will give them purpose and provide personal development. In fact, 56% of adults say company culture is more important than salary, and 77% consider the culture before applying to a job.3
#3: Hospital Employer Branding Creates a Foundation for Recruitment Marketing
Recruiting healthcare workers isn’t easy, especially with nursing and physician shortages across the country.4 Today’s healthcare recruiters, therefore, need to engage talent on multiple channels, including social media, email, paid search, live calls, and programmatic advertising.
The foundation for candidate outreach, however, is your hospital’s employer brand. You need unified messaging that ties your recruitment strategies together and attracts physicians and nurses.
#4: Hospital Employer Branding Helps You Attract the Right People
Hospitals often focus on hiring the best clinical talent out there. However, it’s just as important to find nursing and physician candidates who are the right fit for your healthcare organization.
For example, let’s say you interview a pathologist who seems to have all the right qualifications, including expertise in the areas you’re looking for. However, this interviewee prefers to work alone — but your hospital has a culture that requires teamwork and collaboration. The candidate may not be the right fit for your organization after all.
The employer brand at your hospital allows you to clearly express your health system’s values and offerings, ensuring potential candidates understand what it’s like to work at your organization. You’ll engage the right people while helping unfit candidates seek a job elsewhere.
#5: Hospital Employer Branding Sets You Apart From Other Healthcare Organizations
In today’s healthcare environment, many physicians and nurses are tasked with choosing between hospitals that offer similar salaries and financial benefits. So what sets one apart from the other? The decision often comes down to career growth, prestige, and work culture.
Your employer brand image is an opportunity to show prospective candidates that you care about your employees and offer more than just money and financial incentives. For example, Stanford Health Care — one of the top hospitals to work for — uses their careers site and marketing materials to highlight the chance to impact the future of medicine, participate in leadership programs, and have a work-life balance.
#6: Hospital Employer Branding Saves You Money
Investing in the success of your hospital employer branding is one of the easiest ways to save on long-term healthcare recruitment costs. Research from LinkedIn shows that having a strong employer brand can reduce your staff turnover by 28%.5 This has major positive ramifications for healthcare organizations, where turnover can cost $400,000 in lost revenue per physician and $200,000 in onboarding costs.
The same LinkedIn research report also highlights that a great employer brand can lower your cost-per-hire by 50%.6 That can mean significant savings in an industry where it can cost anywhere from $250,000 to $1,000,000 to recruit a single physician.7
#7: Hospital Employer Branding Leads to Increased Candidate Referrals
People love to talk about employer brands they like and admire. Once your hospital has a widespread positive impression, word of mouth will create a positive cycle that further reinforces your hospital’s strong reputation. As a result, current employees and other healthcare workers will be more likely to refer their friends and colleagues to recruitment. What does this mean for you? Your job gets a whole lot easier. And for your organization? Referrals can help with retention, as 46% of referred employees stay at an organization for over three years compared to 14% of people hired via job boards.8
Moving Forward With Employer Branding in Healthcare Recruitment
Establishing a strong healthcare employer brand is crucial to attracting and sourcing top clinical talent. However, that’s only the first step. You need to ensure your hospital employer branding is communicated across multiple channels, particularly the ones where physicians and nurses spend time.
That’s where Rave Health comes in. With 20+ years in the recruitment marketing space, our omni-channel marketing approach and proprietary database of 99% of clinical talent will ensure your employer brand messaging reaches the right people at the right time.
References
- Vizard. (2017). How Microsoft, Virgin and EA are approaching employer branding. MarketingWeek.
- https://business.linkedin.com/ content/dam/business/ talent-solutions/global/ en_us/c/pdfs /ultimate-list-of-employer-brand-stats.pdf
- Culture Over Salary: Why You Need Culture Management
- Duquesne University. (2020, June 26). The Shortage of Healthcare Workers in the U.S. Duquesne University School of Nursing.
- Vizard. (2017). How Microsoft, Virgin and EA are approaching employer branding. MarketingWeek.
- Ibid
- American Medical Association. (2018, October 12). How much physician burnout is costing your organization.
- Hebberd, L. (2018, May 14). Why Employee Referrals are the Best Source of Hire. Undercover Recruiter.