Wearing a t-shirt on a conference call or a hoodie at Google’s office is the new normal. The business dress code is becoming more casual and flexible to highlight our skills and performance but is still imbued with a fashion sense. Where are these trends coming from, and how should managers respond?

The Tech Industry Pioneering Casual Attire

Big companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook are famous for their casual office attire. Dressed in hoodies and jeans, the employees behind Sundar Pichai, Evan Williams and Mark Zuckerburg are headlining fashion trends in the tech industry.

While the “dress to impress” mantra is still valid, changes in dress codes prove that it’s not all about the looks. Intellect and performance are more important in business nowadays, especially in the digital-first ambience, as the tech giants demonstrate.

After the casual dress code revolutionized the tech industry, it also caught up with the booming landscape of start-ups. During the rise of start-up culture, many small businesses quickly grew to become corporate giants in an informal atmosphere.

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Other Industries Embracing the Casual Dress Code

Now, other industries are chiming in on the trend too.

“Dress codes in the finance sector have historically had the most conservative, formal standards, and even those are changing,” said New York-based alumna for Goldman Sachs Jessica Cadmus, who works as a stylist in the corporate world.

In 2019, Goldman Sachs published a memo announcing a shift towards “a more casual environment,” and they’re not the only ones. Morgan Stanley and other investment banks are also embracing the change.

Other industries are also driving change. The British airline Virgin Atlantic also relaxed its dress code by allowing flight attendants to wear pants and not forcing them to put make-up on so that they have “an increased level of comfort” and “more choice” to express individuality. The retail world is following suit: Target, for example, now allows employees to wear blue jeans every day at work.

Gen Z Is Shaping the New Business Dress Code

The emerging cohort of workers is the tech-savvy and fashion-forward Gen Z. As such, businesses are adapting their corporate dress codes to attract top talent from the young generation.

The new dress code is dictated by the latest trends in menswear, taking a more flexible approach. That means that knitwear will dominate the office style during sweater weather. Wider cuts, belted overcoats, and men’s loafers are the top fashion and shoe trends for this autumn, so expect to see them around the office.

Changing the Dress Code Reflects Changing Mindsets

While the shift in the business dress code is evident, even in historically rigid industries such as finance, some employers have clung to formalwear in the workplace.

Just like hiring managers would enlist the desired skills and requirements in a job advert and recruiters would prepare their clients, talking about the new dress code can help put everyone on the same page, especially employers.

If you’re a recruiter, you may have clients who insist on finding a candidate that fits their outdated dress code. But they could miss out on innovative talent by judging them based on their outfit. In that case, it’s your job to take them through the new business code and the benefits of adopting it. Bring the stats in: studies show that 61% of employees are more productive when they have a relaxed dress code. Show them some candidates that don’t fit the current dress code but have the perfect skillset. You’re the expert, and they’ve hired you for a reason, so bring that expertise to bear.

As part of adapting to the hybrid working environment, it’s important to start reworking our collective mindset around the new business dress code and other changes that come with that. Mastering this can help position us better in the evolved business landscape.

The shift towards a more casual dress code is accelerating as employees are looking to embrace comfort and individuality. A more flexible work attire means a happier workforce, better productivity, and more gains for the company.

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But if you ask the employees, their response, according to a Monster survey, is that 61% are just burned out. And 72% of those burned out say the reason is their company is short-staffed. Surprisingly, although the buzz is everywhere, it seems that human resources haven’t caught up yet. SHRM recently reported that only 36% of HR professionals are aware of the term “quiet quitters,” and only half of those are concerned about the trend. So where is the disconnect?

Through this so-called “quiet quitting,” employees are actually screaming that enough is enough. In speaking with professionals across the industry, I’ve found the general consensus is that working 50-plus hours a week was affecting their mental health. Most had been trying to do their primary job for the first 40 hours and then trying to pick up any additional work for those who had been termed but not replaced during the next 10-20 hours. Weekends blended into the workweek because they needed time to catch up and prepare for the week ahead in order to combat the constant feeling of being behind on deadlines. Now, having scaled back for self-preservation — and being called out for doing so — those employees are wondering how “going above and beyond” became an expectation rather than an occasional service.

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But what are the solutions? Some experts say to pay employees more and they will be OK with working more. Some say provide recognition and employees will be happy to work more. Some say just communicate with employees, tell them why they have to work more and hope they will agree to do it. Meanwhile, the workers are begging employers to realize that it goes deeper than that. They need a workload balance, job sharing opportunities or updated processes that will enable them to be more efficient in performing their job. In order to accomplish this, they also need support from management and realistic deadlines.

From an employer perspective, I believe it’s an internal challenge. Maybe budgets are being cut, people are actually quitting, and talent is hard to find. It is true, according to SIA research, that there are more jobs posted than people available to work, even if every person in the US were employed. This means hiring more help isn’t always an option. So what else can companies do to lighten the load? If your culture is company-centric, then your challenge is going to be to understand the “quiet quitters” and find ways to improve processes so that the work still gets done without extra hours being expected.

If your company is employee-centric, then your challenge is going to be to listen to the “quiet quitters” and create an employee resource group think tank to help solve the root issues causing burnout. Employees will tell you which activities could be centralized and/or off-loaded. They know how to divide and conquer work among their teams. They know when to say no to customer requests. And they know which work efforts have already been tried and failed.

So, before you judge some of those employees who are starting to limit their work hours as “slackers” or call them “unmotivated,” look in the mirror and ask yourself what your organization can do to help get work done efficiently while retaining your valuable workforce.

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In turn, the past decade has seen an explosion of litigation under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which empowers people to resolve errors in credit reports and background checks, among other provisions. The number of FCRA lawsuits has nearly tripled since 2011, reaching 5,400 suits in 2021. Meanwhile, background check-related lawsuits have forced companies like Aerotek, Kelly Services, AT&T, Home Depot, and Whole Foods to pay more than $325 million in settlements. As just one example, Starbucks recently settled lawsuits alleging the company used flawed data from background checks to deny work to thousands of jobseekers.

Yet there is little reason to think employers have become less concerned for their workers. Rather, the broker-centered verification system has simply dominated the US workforce for decades, and it has become normal for employers to hire background check firms that buy their verification data from brokers like Equifax or Experian, which collect and sell billions of records on workers’ income, education, employment and more. Some verification firms are even subsidiaries of the brokers themselves. For instance, Equifax’s The Work Number service collects payroll data on more than half of the entire US workforce.

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Unfortunately, this system creates enormous risks for both workers and employers. Beyond the threat of data breaches — like the infamous 2017 hack at Equifax — or the fact that brokers re-sell worker data to countless buyers, it is incredibly easy for data errors to go undetected when workers are not included in their own verification process. Where data brokers assume there will always be errors across the billions of records they process, mistakes like inaccurate criminal histories, missing jobs and even small misspellings will be obvious and urgently important to the workers involved. And where 78% of employers aim to offer identity theft prevention as a worker benefit, employers can avoid all the added costs of this benefit if their workers can simply review their data and flag any anomalies.

This verification system is outdated and inefficient, and it treats workers like products rather than clients or consumers. Meanwhile, Equifax raised the price of its employment verification by 31% in the past year, passing these costs to job seekers, home buyers and staffing firm customers.

However, new technologies are emerging that allow workers to take control of their own payroll data, offering personal, encrypted vaults to store their data, review it for accuracy and share it with specific third parties with the knowledge that the authenticity of their data is guaranteed.

Regardless of the specific technology, it is critical that employers explore these new platforms. Beyond legal liability, mistakes in payroll data can devastate workers, ruin job opportunities and damage relationships with employers. For instance, the world recently learned Apple labeled former employees as “associates,” regardless of their title. Since these workers did not verify their own records, some were shocked to learn this error had derailed other job offers. Moreover, taking a bold step to protect your workers’ data can signal to your clients that they can entrust their own sensitive data to your company and your contractors.

To avoid litigation, PR crises, worker turmoil and corporate distrust, experts urge employers to arm themselves with policies, documentation and redundant compliance measures. And while these are good precautions, they can never fully shield a company that relies on data from massive brokers to vet their workers.

There was certainly a reason employers relied on data brokers in the past, but things have changed. Laws and technologies are shifting, leaving employers with a choice: Stick with the old system and do your best to defend against liability, breaches and distraught workers, or cut out brokers as middlemen and give workers a voice in their own employment story.

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However, some HR departments have been resistant to move with the times. This is due to some fears of the growing pains associated with a liquid talent strategy; procurement, for example, is a common anxiety. How agile can it really be if we have to manage endless procurement processes and contract prep?

Specialized freelancing marketplaces are the solution to these pain points. These online platforms provide a pre-certified, curated selection of professionals at an organization’s fingertips, with a single point of contact for contracts and invoicing. In this post, I’ll outline the key benefits of a high-level freelancing talent strategy.

Plug the tech talent gap. New technologies are ushering in new ways of working. As the demand for digitization intensifies, companies must re-skill employees or search for specialized talent. Unfortunately, this talent is far from abundant. According to a recent study from Korn Ferry, the technology and media sector will have a global shortfall of 4.3 million workers by 2030.

To secure the best talent in a competitive market, you need to move fast. Early starters — which include some of the world’s largest corporations — are able to cover their tech talent gap with remarkable agility with the support of talent platforms.

Speedy onboarding for on-demand talent. In the past, organizations were reluctant to take on freelancers because of the administrative work involved. Then there was onboarding; how could they be confident that the freelancer would fit into the existing company culture?

Proponents of the freelancing revolution know that a freelancer is rarely a one-hit wonder. Instead, leveraging on-demand talent is the start of a long and mutually beneficial relationship. Once they’ve been onboarded, they can slot in quickly and seamlessly on a project-by-project basis.

The result? Talent when and where you need it, already armed with the knowledge of processes and protocols, for the best possible price.

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Top talent at a low price. Gartner reported that post-pandemic, 32% of organizations surveyed said they’re using more freelancers to cut costs. This is because on-demand talent enables companies to get more done with a more flexible budget. This is particularly useful for project-based work where niche expertise can be drafted in as needed, as opposed to offering the highly competitive salary such a profile would demand.

Facilitate skill-sharing. It’s important to emphasize that cost reductions by no means lead to a reduction in quality — specialist platforms ensure that experts have verified experience.

However, this isn’t to say that full-time employees will fall by the wayside in the future. External expertise can share knowledge with internal talent and bring out the best in each team member, enabling the organization to identify hidden skills and help each employee reach their full potential.

Be ready for whatever the future throws at you. It goes without saying that the pandemic was a turning point in working cultures. The abrupt move to remote work demonstrated that resilience and flexibility were the new imperative of an unpredictable business environment. Those that were ready for the shake-up thrived, and those that weren’t fell by the wayside.

Embracing a flexible talent strategy means you’re ready for anything. A good example is managing changing expectations in regard to employee experience. For example, the Harvard Business Review found that 40% of surveyed business leaders said that young people’s desire for more flexibility and autonomy would have a significant impact on the future of work.

The Freelancing Revolution Is the Future

Looking forward, a flexible approach to talent will be what sets organizations apart. Human resources departments will have to develop new skills, but thankfully, the freelancing revolution is already well underway. Online talent platforms are making it easier than ever for companies to access freelance expertise and keep pace with new trends in the labor market.

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Do you have someone on your team designated to ensure steps don’t get missed in simple onboarding or extension processes around contingent workers? The results when a key person in the process is out for a few days unexpectedly can endanger projects — not to mention the reputation of your contingent workforce program. Whose responsibility is it?

A couple weeks ago, an acquaintance of mine — a long-term consultant for a global technology firm — launched his laptop to discover he had been cut off from all systems access at his client company. “Joe,” who supports a large business unit for the organization, knew immediately what happened. A couple weeks prior, the staffing firm that manages his contract and the team he supports alerted the contingent workforce program office that his contract was set to expire and needed to be extended.

Whether the person that alert went to was on vacation, had moved on to another role or left the company altogether, the end result was that no one completed the tasks necessary to keep Joe active in the system. For three full business days, Joe was unable to provide any support his internal team needed. Over the course of the following three days, his access was restored incrementally. So, for six business days, Joe was not able to do his job.

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Fortunately for Joe and his team, this came at a relatively slow time for the group. But it made me wonder if this was an isolated issue or there were other contingent workers across this global corporation who were similarly affected. Depending on the project at hand, several days’ downtime for contractors can seriously jeopardize deliverables and, ultimately, the company’s bottom line. Not to mention that in order to ensure the contractors not be assigned out to other clients, this organization would likely find itself having to pay Joe’s — and any similarly affected worker’s — regular hourly rate for ALL the hours affected, whether he worked at all or not, notes Dawn McCartney, SIA’s VP, CWS Council. A costly lesson indeed, depending on how many workers fell through these cracks.

While managers of this program can rest assured in a way — Joe’s access was completely shut down as the system was designed to do — they should be distressed that their processes failed this contractor and their internal stakeholders.

“Avoidable mistakes like this one can have an impact on not only the contingent worker and staffing provider but on the internal stakeholders as well,” McCartney explains. “Remember, your program needs to have buy-in and adoption from all parties to be successful. Avoid giving a reason for them to avoid supporting the program and create a workaround.”

It is critical for program managers to have a clearly defined process in place. Alerts should be set up within the system to let key people know — along with assigned backups — of impending contract expirations with plenty of time to spare for an extension to be approved, if needed. “We have seen success when program offices send 90-, 60- and 30-day reminders of an expiration date approaching,” McCartney adds. And if a response is still not received after the 30-day reminder, a phone call may be required.

Because the contingent worker and the staffing provider want them to be working — and billing — both will usually start to look for the next opportunity if an extension request is not processed or received.

In this case, Joe and his staffing firm knew the extension was imminent, so Joe remained available for the client. But not all errors have happy endings. “You do not want to put through a late extension only to find out the contingent worker is not available,” McCartney warns.

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A driving factor of the Great Resignation is that workers are re-thinking where careers fit into their lives. Many are choosing to join the contingent workforce for greater flexibility and work/life balance. Tapping into this growing worker class is becoming one of the best ways to secure in-demand skills. But the competition for these workers is also growing. Employers that take a skills-based approach to hiring will be best positioned to find, attract and retain the qualified workers they need in today’s tight market.

The Shift to Skills-Based Success Profiles

Organizations typically source talent using classic job descriptions. If an employer is looking for a project manager, for example, the job description outlines the project manager’s specific responsibilities. While this overview of the role sets expectations on the needs of the position, it doesn’t always convey the exact skills required to do the job nor what success really looks like.

Instead of including a line item in a job description about managing contracts with vendors and communicating expected deliverables, think about the negotiation skills it takes to be a great project manager. You’ll likely need someone who can be persuasive, who instinctively knows which negotiation styles work in each scenario, and who can collaboratively work with partners to reach common goals. Focusing your search on candidates with those precise skillsets in mind increases the likelihood that you’ll find the right person for the job.

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The Value of Skills-Based Hiring

Employers should use a skills-based strategy to expand access to qualified talent. By focusing on skills instead of looking first at previous job titles, you capture qualified external candidates you might not have otherwise considered. There could also be people within your organization that don’t carry the project manager title but possess the necessary skills and are interested in a new challenge.

Skills-based hiring strategies also boost worker engagement and retention. Putting people in roles based on their skillsets naturally keeps them energized and gives them new experiences. New Flextrack research uncovered 45% of contingent workers have terminated an assignment early due to dissatisfaction. Another 47% say they’d consider quitting an assignment early for a role with greater professional development. Companies that proactively give their workers growth opportunities and prioritize their satisfaction will stand to increase worker commitment.

Flip the Script on Skills Shortages

Finding skills is one thing. Figuring out how much to pay to secure those in-demand skillsets is another. Machine learning capabilities are adding value to employers’ skills-based hiring strategies by predicting the availability and market rates for specific collections of skills in a given geography.

Let’s say you are looking for a project manager with strong negotiation skills and other specific attributes, and you need them to be based on the East Coast. Machine learning technology can tell you the availability and going rate for these specific skillsets in Boston and compare with the market for these skillsets in Providence. You might uncover that you can get the same caliber of skills in the less-competitive Providence market for a better rate — and you know what you need to pay to attract the top talent in this market.

As workers re-evaluate what matters most to them in their jobs, it’s time for employers to rethink the strategies and technologies they’re relying on to build out their workforces. Think about the skills you need to move your priority projects forward and put those first when sourcing new roles. This mindset shift is essential for successfully navigating today’s tight labor market.

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On the outset, this trend is positive. But many of today’s enterprises still haven’t fully wrapped their heads around how to source and strategically engage our nation’s 51 million-plus independent workers.

Strategic is the operative word. Enterprises can neither holistically rely on third parties, like staffing agencies, nor can they expect managers to do double duty and find their own talent. HR is tapped with the primary focus in most organizations of leveraging FTEs.

Today’s best enterprises view access to contingent labor as a specialized sub-department and consider direct sourcing of this talent, particularly their most-in demand skill sets, to be a business imperative. Per MBO’s latest research, 88% of organizations are either actively direct sourcing or experimenting with this use, and those who aren’t doing so understand the need — they by and large just haven’t figured out the logistics.

Here are five ways direct sourcing can solve issues currently experienced by contingent labor professionals as a business case for starting or expanding use in your organization.

Greater Access to Specialized Talent

Today’s skills gaps in enterprises are greater than ever before. By building a pool of pre-vetted talent that has already been engaged with your organization, it becomes easy to find and deploy highly skilled workers when you need them. Fifty-seven percent of enterprise leaders say direct sourcing enables greater access to specialized skills. In today’s competitive market, talent have the distinct advantage of choosing the clients with whom they work. A direct sourcing program is a key way brands can firmly establish their foothold not just as an employer of choice but as a client of choice as well.

Improve Time to Onboard, Manage Turnovers and Transitions

Time to work has been a big obstacle when it comes to engaging independent workers. By creating a pool of talent that can be accessed at any time for upcoming projects, time to onboard is significantly decreased and talent is productive faster.

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Manage Work Quality

It’s difficult to vet any type of talent — even FTE roles — prior to project start. But by creating a pool of directly accessible talent known, and perhaps previously engaged by your organization, the risk of trial in the unknown is greatly decreased. In fact, 56% of enterprise leaders say that direct sourcing leads to increased work quality, and 52% says it increases hiring manager satisfaction.

By shifting functions in-house — managed with your own team or a PMO led by your external  partner — managers curate, cultivate and engage networks, pools and even deployable benches of available talent, matching skill sets to current and future project opportunities. They, in turn, feel more in control of the hiring process, which leads to increased job satisfaction.

Reduce Misclassification Risk

By engaging talent via a codified program, organizations prevent rogue sourcing that both manages cost and risk. Misclassification penalties can run in the millions, and brand damage can take years to repair. This is not an insignificant reason to bring a program under thorough vetting.

Reduce Costs

Labor cost is, in today’s challenging economic climate, of course a primary concern. While 53% of enterprise leaders do say direct sourcing reduces costs, this is considered a supplemental, not primary, benefit to program creation and expansion.

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Why People Are Resigning

The Great Resignation is the result. Two-fifths of people are unhappy with their current work and are considering leaving their job in the near future, which poses an exciting opportunity for staffing agencies that can fulfill the changing needs of today’s workers.

The main reasons cited by employees who are leaving their employer in the near future are:

• Lack of career development
• Inadequate pay
• Uncaring bosses and managers
• Their work doesn’t feel meaningful
• Their work isn’t flexible enough
• Support for well-being

Moreover, 75% of employees state that they want to work for organizations that are making positive contributions to society.

Connecting With Candidates

This provides a valuable framework for staffing agencies that are seeking to connect more deeply with candidates during the Great Resignation.

Offer clarity around career development. Firstly, make sure you and your client organizations have clear career pathways for candidates — and communicate this early on, ideally during the interview process. If vertical promotions (to managerial roles, for example) aren’t possible, look at lateral moves into other departments that will continue to stretch and challenge candidates. Nobody wants to feel like their career is going stale, so provide experiences that enable them to continuously learn and develop.

Meet Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a pyramid model that describes the motivation behind our actions. At the bottom are our basic physiological needs like food and water, financial security, wellness and safety. Then we move up the pyramid to social needs and esteem needs. At the peak of the pyramid is self-actualization, where individuals are focused on fulfilling their potential. If you cannot meet the basic needs, people will not reach the upper levels — and that’s why many people are switching jobs to more financially secure ones. In other words, cut corners at the bottom of the pyramid, and your workforce will never reach its full potential.

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Check in with candidates. Setting up regular, informal meetings with candidates will help you build a personal connection with them, getting to know their individual needs and passions. It will result in more successful placements and greater retention of candidates. It will also help to address the third point of why people are leaving their employers — if they feel like nobody really cares about their work, why would they stay? At the very least, if they find their current line manager isn’t meeting this need, they will turn to you, their staffing consultant, to help them navigate their next step.

Build meaningful work together. If you’re connecting with candidates regularly, you’ll begin to understand what drives them and provides meaning in their careers. This will give you a better idea of what placements will suit them, and together you’ll be able to shape a career path that doesn’t just pay the bills but also gives greater satisfaction at the end of the work day.

Focus on autonomy and flexibility. Candidates are now seeking work that can fit around other needs, like family commitments, studying or simply living with greater work/life balance. Staffing consultants need to be aware of this so they can provide opportunities that align with someone’s availability. Providing a range of opportunities for a candidate to look through can also give them the power to choose the employers and roles that best suit them.

Well-being. This ties closely with building a close relationship with your candidates — allowing you to check in on their overall well-being as well as their availability and aspirations. Ideally, your relationship will be trusted enough that if they are in a role that doesn’t suit them and is impacting their well-being, they should be able to communicate this to you for your support.

Delivering a Personal Experience

Enveloping all of this is a deeply personal working relationship with candidates that allow staffing managers to anticipate their needs and goals before sharing opportunities.

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“Inflation will put more pressure on chief procurement officers to manage their departments strictly within budget,” according to the Ardent Partners Annual Research Report. That said, here are some compliance pitfalls to be aware of when hiring contingent workers.

Worker classification. A common freelance hiring issue originates from a poor chain of custody around worker classification. Without legal worker classification, your organization is in danger of costly litigation. If your worker classification is outsourced to a managed service provider (MSP), they may also have outsourced this important function to a vendor management solution (VMS).

Many businesses have redistributed the responsibility of worker classification to a third party or still have paper processes in place, which is precarious and, dare I say, archaic. The party you employ to carry out worker classification won’t be in the hot seat if an audit occurs, so it’s up to you to ensure your worker classification is compliant with the law.

Selecting poor MSPs/VMSs. Poor vendor choices can happen using an outdated MSP. Many MSPs have not updated their practices to include modern technology and inevitably have inaccurate need analysis and data errors. Using inadequate MSPs and VMSs can leave you non-compliant, and may contribute to a perceived talent shortage because of their limited bandwidth in quickly and compliantly hiring contingent workers.

If your MSPs or VMSs are not adhering to the established set of guidelines laid out in their contracts, your organization is at risk for fraud, corruption and rogue spending. Dependable vendors can also be the link between you and a flowing supply of labor. Capitalizing upon what VMSs and MSPs do well while directly sourcing your own external talent could save you time and money. Tech tools allow you to sidestep low-quality recruiting services, undelivered talent quotas, questionable ethical standards and compliance risks around hiring.

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No agile workforce strategy. Smart enterprises are hiring at speed using External Workforce Management systems to minimize the effects of the talent shortage by adopting strong external hiring processes. A good process streamlines onboarding, tracks progress and compliantly pays freelancers on time.

Procurement teams can benefit from External Workforce Management to reduce risks around signing contracts, non-disclosure agreements, background checks and the long-term storage of and access to onboarding documents. Standardized procurement procedures in one central system allow internal stakeholders to know exactly what to do at each hiring stage because the system is virtually automated.

According to Deloitte, “Only 8% of respondents, for instance, said that they had established processes to manage and develop alternative workforce sources…”

Managing independent contractors compliance -at speed- can be difficult. Nonetheless, there are technological workarounds that procurement professionals can use to speed up the notoriously slow non-employee hiring process while upholding ethics, data privacy, transparency and other legal requirements surrounding employment laws.

Don’t Be Afraid to Tap Into the Gig Economy

It’s critical to hire flexible global talent to stay competitive. While communicating with external talent is more straightforward, engaging contractors for flexible work and maintaining compliance can seem overwhelming without the right innovation.

Using agile talent means you can scale your labor force during seasonal demands, contract talent to fill gaps in your teams, reduce workers during slower periods and have access to a larger talent pool.

According to Statista, “In 2021, there were about 23.9 million independent workers in the United States, an increase from 12.9 million in 2017.” Using quality External Workforce Management  can help you outmaneuver the competition with perks that include tax benefits, increased productivity, higher ROI and lowered overhead costs while providing options for increased diversity and inclusion. Advanced tech exist that works alongside your MSP and VMS, not replacing them, but enhancing the workflows around labor law compliance, worker classification, custom contracting and spend visibility — cutting out rogue, low-quality hiring practices.

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In fact, according to the American Hospital Association, two-thirds of hospitals currently have a nurse vacancy rate of 7.5% or more. Hospital employment has continued to decline compared to pre-pandemic levels and data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics states that hospital employment is down 95,600 employees from February 2020, with no signs of the trend slowing down.

Vacancy rates may be perceived differently whether you are in human resources and looking at the hospital as a whole or if you are the nurse manager of a specific unit, i.e., medical surgical. This may even vary from organization and how the vacancy and measurement is defined.

At Conexus MedStaff, we have seen different interpretations of the actual “vacancy” terminology, and the criticalness related to that vacancy. Please note, having any vacancy is not recommended. A nurse manager may take a leave of absence into their consideration of vacancy, as they are looking at their total full-time employment (FTE) requirements.  This manager may also consider a position as vacant as soon as a notice has been given; however, hospital policy may require approval and authorization for reposting the same position. Furthermore, having a vacancy of several positions within one unit, and even within one shift, may have more of an impact then another area which is larger and has more personnel to lean to.

The inclusion of time as a consideration of vacancy may vary as well. For example, a nurse manager may consider a nurse providing notice of leave as an impending vacancy, however, the healthcare system may consider a monthly calculation or a quarter as the measurement.

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Vacancy Rate Calculation

If you are curious how to calculate your organization’s vacancy rate, see the explanation and accompanying example below.

Take the number of vacant job-specific positions (or positions within the whole organization) and divide by the total number of job-specific positions (or positions within the whole organization). Then, multiply that number by 100 to identify your vacancy rate.

There is no denying that the healthcare industry is currently experiencing the effects of high demand for healthcare professionals and higher than normal turnover, while also struggling to recruit and retain talent. The direct impact of this, is likely felt hardest within the actual unit, including healthcare staff, patients, and family of those patients, that are providing and receiving care.

MORE: How recruiters can maximize automation

Being creative and remaining flexible to identify both short- and long-term solutions remains key to overcoming these current and ongoing challenges. To learn how Conexus MedStaff can offer strategic partnership and assistance in achieve these goals, learn more at www.conexusmedstaff.com.

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