In Australia, we’ve seen a nursing shortage and a worrying shortfall of GPs add even more pressure to the country’s dearth of skilled healthcare workers. What this means for organisations is that they need to fundamentally rethink their workforce strategy including their candidate experience for recruitment. Relying on outdated methods for attracting staff, especially when coupled with the use of legacy systems in the back-office, is damaging healthcare organisations’ ability to attract talent, and reducing the quality of care they can provide patients.

The good news is that cloud-enabled technology is helping healthcare providers transform their talent strategies by providing them with the data to focus on hiring for skills. This ensures organisations can futureproof themselves despite the widespread market challenges, as a skills-based talent strategy can help them respond more effectively to change while getting the most out of their people.

But overhauling systems and processes that have been in place for years, if not decades, cannot happen overnight – especially when the wellbeing of patients remains a top priority. That’s why it’s so important that healthcare decision-makers find the right cloud-led solutions to integrate to.

In order to effectively transition to a skills-based talent strategy, you need access to the right data in a timely fashion. When hiring, that means your HR department needs the ability to parse numerous applications, resumes, professional qualifications and credentials, aptitude tests, workplace experience and more, and then provide you with the most suitable candidates based on the data points you’ve requested. Attempting this process manually and with clunky, outdated systems is extremely time-consuming and resource-draining, especially during a skills shortage when you need to fill positions quickly.

Workday provides incredible opportunities for healthcare organisations across their human capital management (HCM) function and various other departments. Its machine learning capability provides candidates with suggested skills and details around the competencies required for the job they are applying for, which improves the candidate experience during the recruitment process.

But beyond hiring, consider all the challenges healthcare organisations are facing. From juggling competing needs in rural vs urban environments, to managing accommodation costs or finding partners’ jobs if they need to shift for work, to the resources required to hire for different roles, from entry-level positions right up to the C-suite. Because Workday has the ability to identify what candidates are looking for, that enables healthcare employers to better customise job packages. Armed with incredibly valuable insights, decision-makers can also plug learning and development gaps for existing staff, and offer them opportunities to boost retention rates.

The purpose of digital transformation is to enhance operations across all departments. For healthcare providers, investing in cloud-led technology like Workday can provide incredible value from the back-office right through to the patient experience.

By streamlining back-office processes and freeing up staff from manual, repetitive processes, it means healthcare providers have more time to focus on frontline duties. Workday delivers a complete picture of the organisation through the power of a single source of truth, which help organisations improve operations across their continuum of care. The platform also provides advanced people insights – active listening platforms to understand employee sentiments, turnover benchmarks to measure key metrics, and detailed analytics to empower staff.

Essentially, adopting a modern cloud-based platform such as Workday means you are optimising the efforts of the back-office right through to the front-office. Administrators no longer have to spend a portion of their day on data entry, reporting or other time-consuming tasks. It also enhances the hiring process. With HR now focusing on a skills-based talent strategy, they can tap into exactly what candidates want in a workplace. Whether that’s flexible work arrangements, better roster management, allowing admin tasks to be carried out on their smartphones – such as on the way to or from an appointment with a patient.

Workday can capture the data you need to plug talent gaps and build a team that is connected, capable and focused on elevating the patient experience. It will help you better manage resources with skills and talent data in order to attract, develop and retain the very best industry talent. With Workday’s comprehensive mobile app, staff can also work from any device, and with self-service functionality they can get answers and complete tasks faster to remain focused on patient care.