Work-life Balance is Not Just Noise

By: Stephanie D. Wright, MSA, CMPE, CPRP
AAPPR Board Member

As we enter our traditional busy summer season for Physician Recruitment, it is essential to prioritize balance while pushing ourselves and our teams to meet the high demands of our recruitment goals. Work-life balance is not just noise; it has become fundamental to achieving optimal results and fostering high-level productivity. Finding balance helps recruitment professionals avoid a reduction in productivity while remaining resilient to continue to meet the pace of our industry. Here are some ways to balance goals, avoid burnout, and build resiliency.

Setting expectations with leadership and providing information to hiring leaders and senior leadership regarding the busy summer season is vital. Leaders need to be reminded of the basics and current market conditions. Summer is a hot time for recruitment because practicing physicians are renewing their current contracts. While prospective 2024 candidates are eager to begin their job search. Leaders must understand that the team must act quickly and clearly to accept/reject candidates. It’s a seller’s market for Physician recruits, and they know it. Having the hiring goals finalized to be prepared to answer all questions and explaining any nuances related to the particulars of the position will be critical as there is little time to gather responses from the team and present them to candidates before they move to the next job for consideration.

Monitor processes to look for improvement, reviewing workflows to ensure targets are being met and how they could be addressed if there are any lags. Often during the summer vacation, schedules can impede and extend the timeframes, ensuring measures are taken to keep candidates flowing through the process quickly. Take steps to keep the momentum going even if the regular business partners are not available.

Levering Tech for productivity, in this error of Physician Recruitment, we have many advantages with full utilization of our tools. We cannot only use technology to schedule emails and text messages to be sent out when we are away from our desks but also to leverage the best practices for our specific situations. Most of us have access to one or more tools for advertising and marketing resources, for example, PracticeLink, Doximity, PracticeMatch, etc. These tools provide us with valuable advantages when it comes to accessing our recruitment data. By utilizing these tools beyond their basic functions of job posting and sending out job-related emails, we can unlock additional benefits. Leverage these tools to research what is working (email outreach, postings, etc.) provide insight to the interest of your advertisements, we can target competitors, find out how many graduates are available in our markets, etc.

Using established relationships, check in with past recruits for feedback about working at the organization. Of course, our goal is to get new leads, but we can also leverage this conversation to get ideas about how working is different (for better or worse) than expected. Holding talks with past recruits also serves as a retention checkpoint for the organization to get a feel of the current mindset of the candidate. Remember, you established the original trust with the candidate and brought them into the company, and that is all about relationship, communication, and trust.

Taking time to pause, remote work has its advantages, but it also has our teams sitting longer, working longer without a pause for mental refreshment. I encourage my team to block time in their daily schedules to step away from their work area and go into another room, breath, stroll around the block, send a gratitude text/email to a friend or co-worker, etc. The thought is to engage other parts of our brains and build flexibility into the workday to sustain our hope of positive outcomes.

We must focus on balance and resiliency to maintain our talents within this industry, as many of us suffer as we try to meet the high demands and remain high-functioning people. Turnover within Physician Recruitment is higher than ever. Retaining our talent in the industry is crucial for us to remain sustainable; we must pause and reset physically and mentally to stay effective.