The idea that the healthcare sector is struggling with a staff shortage is unjustifiably fast becoming a conventional view. We cannot and should not accept that. There is no shortage of healthcare workers. The problem is that circumstances are created in which the available capacity is not optimally used.
Healthcare professionals currently spend too much time on peripheral matters, leaving too little time for the care of patients and clients. While that is precisely why they ever started working in healthcare.
This means that the outflow in care has increased by 13.4%* compared to last year. 1 in 4 healthcare workers thinks about leaving the organization or even the healthcare sector.
The healthcare professional is overloaded by many peripheral matters; the regulatory burden is increasing and the healthcare professional spends a large part of his time on administrative tasks.
Research by the IZZ Foundation shows that healthcare employees are spending more and more time and energy on compliance with the rules and administrative tasks that result from this.
On average about 40% of their working time. This is at the expense of care for patients and clients. But this also has a major impact on the mental and physical condition of healthcare professionals.
In recent years, we have again seen an increase in the use of psychological care and physiotherapy among healthcare workers.
This increase indicates unhealthy working conditions. And ultimately it is a reason that some healthcare workers leave the sector. Employees have been stretched for a long time.
Healthcare organizations are often inclined to look for the solution in the individual. They focus on individual solutions to increase the resilience of healthcare professionals.
Many organizations are busy adding bones, while the skeleton is crooked. This seriously pollutes the foundation.
We also see at healthcare organizations that HR departments are overflowing with tasks and do not prioritize enough. Stop organizing time-consuming vitality weeks, but take up your role as HR to make working conditions healthier.
Only then will you see effects on absenteeism and turnover. The vitality weeks are ‘nice to have but not urgent.
What is urgent is that HR must also bring more focus into the work. It is no exception that care organizations have about 100 to 150 projects that have to do with HR, health and safety, and vitality. There are far too many.
Go clean up your policy and keep what works. Do not develop a new method for every theme, but make smart choices.
If the dialogue method worked for the theme of informal care, why another method for work pressure? Use the same method for different themes. That saves a lot of time and energy.
There are – unfortunately still far too few – healthcare organizations that have made great strides in working with less regulation and a KISS (keep it simple, stupid) method. Small (self-organizing) teams, facilitated to the maximum by management, and HR, and supported with modern ICT applications.
In this way, administrative processes are limited and the healthcare professional can fully focus on the care of the patient/client.