CHAPTER 20
Strategic Talent Management: Talent Makes All the Difference
Marty Martin
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STELLAR CLINICAL OUTCOMES, STUNNING patient experiences, superb employment experiences, and smart design of clinical and business processes depend on talent. It’s that simple. Hence urgent care leaders and managers are responsible, and will be held accountable by the market, for strategically managing the talent they offer at their centers.
Since a group of McKinsey consultants1 coined the phrase “the War for Talent” in 1997, talent management has received noteworthy attention among academics and practitioners. Strategic talent management, also referred to as human resources management, is the systematic identification of key positions that contribute to the competitive advantage of your urgent care center. Strategic talent management depends on the ability of your urgent care center to attract and retain high-performing employees—employees who are dedicated to your vision, mission, and strategic goals and who are invested in the success of every member of the team as well as to the overall well-being of your patients. The evidence is clear: Strategic talent management is a source of competitive advantage.2
Figure 1 shows the six major functions of strategic talent management, all of which revolve around the core elements of every organization: its mission and strategy.
These functions are described in the sections that follow, along with three evidence-based best practices for each—a total of 18 best practices for you to consider implementing in order to strategically manage your talent.
The success—or failure—of your urgent care center depends on the individuals you engage. Chief executive officers of major companies across the globe choose to spend over 20% of their time on talent management.3 If you are not doing so, then you’re either congratulating yourself on a job well done…or asking yourself this question: Who is really responsible for driving the success of my urgent care center?
Figure 1. The six major functions of strategic talent management.
The War for Talent is critical in the health-care industry because of these challenges confronting its leaders:
The projected shortage of 91,500 physicians by 2020, including 45,400 primary care physicians4
The growing demand for primary care services as a result of the 32 million patients who receive coverage or better coverage because of the Affordable Care Act and the projected 80 million baby boomers who will be retiring by 20355
The redesign of clinical services that is increasingly moving away from higher-cost hospitals to lower-cost ambulatory centers—and even to patients’ homes.
The alarming impact of 12-hour shifts for health-care employees, particularly nurses, where an empirical association has been found between such lengthy shifts and increased levels of burnout, job dissatisfaction, and intention to quit the job altogether6
Signals like these demand that urgent care leaders and managers initiate change to adapt and thrive.
Strategic talent management means understanding that competition exists for the talent we want. It means understanding that the level of talent makes all the difference in determining the level of our outcomes in
Clinical quality