How GPOs Can Help You Manage Staffing Shortages

July 10, 2023 by Medigroup

The current labor shortage in the healthcare industry is an ongoing challenge for businesses. That shortage shows no signs of ending anytime soon, and some researchers suggest that hiring more workers may not solve the issue on its own, either.

Fortunately for healthcare companies, group purchasing organizations (GPOs) may be part of the solution. There are a few ways in which a GPO might help deal with staffing shortages and get businesses back on track. In the following article, we go over a few of those ways to help you decide if a GPO could be useful for your company’s staffing needs.

Ways GPOs Can Help Healthcare Companies Manage a Staffing Shortage

When people think of GPOs, they tend to mainly think about purchasing – which is understandable because it’s right there in the name. But GPOs can also help their members find solutions for other needs, staffing among them.

With the innovative thinking that comes with a collaborative organization and the collective bargaining power they hold; GPOs can help your business address its labor needs in a number of ways. We’ve detailed four of the biggest ways they can be of use in the following section.

Improving Operational Efficiency

By definition, a staffing shortage is when a business or industry doesn’t have the workers to perform all the functions it needs to. The obvious solution is to find more workers. However, that’s not always possible. And there is another way to address a shortage: needing fewer workers to begin with.

A GPO can help make healthcare companies more efficient by handling many of the tasks that are currently being done in-house. These organizations can streamline the procurement process, but they can also help with things like I.T. solutions. When you outsource time-consuming tasks with the help of a GPO, you reduce your overall staffing needs.

Reducing the Cost of Staffing Solutions

Many GPOs can also help procure third-party staffing solutions such as recruitment, hiring, and HR. Like with other products and services, a GPO can make these valuable services more affordable for its members. With a lower price point available to you, you can outsource more of the work of hiring and managing employees.

Third-party HR companies and recruiters are also professionals in their field. Unless you have a dedicated team for staffing-related issues, a third-party provider is likely to be more efficient and more successful at finding employees for your business. Your GPO can also help vet potential providers to make sure you work with one who can get the jobs done right.

Freeing Up More Money for Salaries

The primary reason companies join a GPO is to save money. While there are many things you can do with the money a GPO can save your business, one of those things is to offer higher salaries to current and prospective employees.

Raising salaries can be one of the most effective ways to deal with the ongoing staffing shortage. Your business is competing with other healthcare businesses to hire workers to fulfill your needs. If you can afford to offer better pay than your competitors, you have a much better chance of hiring not just people, but the best people.

In addition, increasing the salaries of current employees can help keep them at your company. With healthcare workers in high demand, you can reduce the chance of losing people to better offers. This lowers the risk of employee turnover and all of the costs and headaches associated with it.

Creating a Better Work Environment

Few people want to work in a stressful environment. An understaffed, high-pressure workplace is prone to stressful working conditions that can cause employees to leave and make it harder to hire new ones.

When you use a GPO to help improve efficiency and reduce complexity, you can remove much of the stress from your company’s work environment. As a result, you’ll have a workplace that is much easier to work in and succeed in. That can help attract prospective employees who currently have their pick of work environments and keep the ones you already have.

Increasing Profitability

By helping them save money, GPOs can help companies be more profitable. While this is obviously a major benefit to the business owner and other stakeholders, it’s also beneficial to workers.

When a company is growing, it can be a much more attractive place to work. For employees, a growing company provides an opportunity to advance in their own careers. The excitement of a company that’s moving up in the industry can be a real draw for potential employees and a good reason for current employees to stick around.

Safeguarding Stability

Instability can lead to a stressful environment that can cause people to leave a company. It can also be a major red flag for job seekers. With the cost savings they can help you achieve and increased efficiency they can offer, GPOs can help keep businesses in the green. And a reliably profitable company is a stable one.

When your company is stable, employees feel safer joining and staying on. Workers don’t have to worry about job cuts looming just around the corner, or staff shortages adding to their workloads. Instead, they can feel comfortable about investing in their jobs and working towards the future.

Using a GPO To Mitigate Staffing Shortages: Conclusion

There is very little that you can do about the healthcare staffing shortage at large. At the current time, there simply aren’t enough qualified healthcare workers to fulfill the needs of the industry.

However, your GPO can be a powerful ally in solving your own staffing needs. These organizations can help you find professional staffing solutions at a price you can afford. They can also help build a more streamlined, stress-free work environment that helps you hold onto your employees and attract new ones.

But the main way a GPO can help you solve labor issues is by helping you save money and be more profitable. That increased profitability allows you to offer better salaries for better people and have a much more stable company with the type of growth that workers want to be a part of.