Attracting and maintaining a diverse workforce in the medical administration field is hugely important for a number of different reasons. Not only does it allow you to cast a wide net to find the most qualified applicants for a typical job from the largest pool of candidates, but it also allows you to bring a wider variety of thinkers into your organization, improve collaboration, and ultimately help to dramatically adjust and improve your business. If you’re a hiring manager who is having a difficult time hiring a diverse workforce, you’ll want to keep a few key things in mind.
The Problem
An old saying tells us that the first step to finding a solution is admitting that you have a problem in the first place. In the medical administration field, the issue isn’t necessarily that people don’t know that they’re having diversity issues in their workforce – far from it. It’s that they don’t know why they’re having this problem in the first place.
If you want to hire a diverse team, start paying more attention to the applicant tracking systems and other analytical data that you’re collecting during the hiring process. This information can provide valuable insight regarding where in the pipeline you’re losing your diverse candidates and otherwise underrepresented applicants. For example, just saying that you’re trying to diversify your workforce isn’t necessarily enough to get the job done – clearly, or you wouldn’t be having a ‘diversity deficiency’ in the first place. Finding out why, which will be a challenge unique to you and your organization, is the key beginning stage of this process.
The Solution
When it comes time to hire more diverse candidates, there are a few key avenues you may choose to pursue. Start by considering where your candidates are coming from, for example – is the source that you’ve selected lacking in underrepresented applicants and other qualified minority groups? Perhaps it’s time to shift your perspective a bit if that truly is the case.
Do you only hire through referrals from the people who are already working for you when it comes to filling your medical administration positions? If so, this may be part of the issue. If you already have a diversity issue – it may lead to qualified people to fill certain positions, but it also probably leads to people who fall into the same basic categories as your current staff.
The solution is relatively straightforward: dramatically shift where you’re drawing your applicants from if you want to hire the most diverse and highly qualified individuals. Remember that if you want to find the best of the best, you can still do that if you branch out beyond just the top tier schools in the country. Many companies are finding success in this exact strategy. It isn’t enough to go through a ‘blind’ application process – you need to be going through a ‘blind source selection’ process too. If that means paying less attention to where a candidate is coming from and more about what it says on their resume, that is fine.
These are just a few of the many ways that you can improve the diversity of your workforce moving forward. Remember that ultimately having a diverse team of top performers is the right recipe for business success!