Workforce Strategy, Planning and Operations

HWS offers two primary services within Workforce Strategy, Planning and Operations:

Operational Assessments and Toolkits
Deep-Dive Engagements

HWS offers short, focused workforce assessments to help health care organizations quickly identify where to focus their energy and investment and, sometimes even more importantly, where not to focus their energy and investment. The heart of these assessments is a rigorous analysis of internal and external data, which is used to pinpoint significant workforce problems, establish performance metrics, and develop a dashboard for ongoing measurement. Each assessment includes tools designed to help clients directly address the identified problems, measure progress, and communicate the need for change.

Representative Assessments

Health Workforce Check-up
Flags potential workforce problems based on data and information gathered from interviews and surveys. Questions are tailored by age, tenure and position. The final report would typically highlight ranked problem areas, suggested strategies and best practices to help drive pragmatic solutions.
Physician Fair Market Value (FMV) Assessments
Independent, third-party fair market value opinions and advice letters for most medical directorships and on-call arrangements. Comparative data culled from multiple public and private data sources, as well as proprietary HWS Labor Market PulseTM databases. Assessments also include analysis of specific labor market conditions, trends and other pertinent data crucial to effective Physician contracting.
Retirement Vulnerability Analysis
An assessment of retirement vulnerability by type of worker and unit, including breakdown of retirement risk by year. Toolkit includes suggested best practices for extending employment beyond retirement age.
Workforce Initiative Portfolio Analysis
A comprehensive inventory of all programs and initiatives that impact current and future supply of workers. The WIP Analysis highlights areas of overinvestment and underinvestment and pinpoints areas in need of new or improved programs and areas in need of funding rationalization. In addition, the WIP Toolkit highlights successful practices and creates mechanisms to share learning among the different parts of an organization.

HWS works with major health care systems to help them address significant workforce planning and management challenges. Deep-Dive Engagements range from focused engagements on developing hospital-school partnerships to expansive engagements on developing a multi-year strategic plan for nurse recruitment and retention.

Each engagement is highly customized to the client needs and actively involves client staff to accurately diagnose workforce problems and challenges. HWS pinpoints underlying root cause problems and develops strategies to address them.

Common Elements

Upfront and in-person communication and consensus building with relevant staff
Detailed research of internal organizational situation and external market forces
Rigorous analysis of available and relevant data (e.g. client, competitors, suppliers, market, national)
Prioritization of workforce problems
Identification and detailed description of relevant strategies and best practices
Development of implementation plan and internal communication strategy

Representative Topics

Long-term supply and demand analysis of allied health workforce
Elevating the institutional nursing brand
Implementing a new care delivery model
Developing a proprietary nursing pipeline
Improving new graduate RN retention
Creating system-wide proprietary leadership and management training programs

HWS Case Study: Targeting Workforce Needs for Future Growth

Confronting significant and growing workforce challenges, a prestigious acute care health system turned to HWS to analyze its current and future workforce needs and to assess the adequacy of the current educational programs to meet its needs and the needs of the entire market. To read more, click here.

To learn more about any of these services, please contact us.

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Health Workforce Solutions

Workforce Strategy, Planning & Operations