A vendor management system (VMS) guarantees the quality of your contingent labor. It is an application that acts as a mechanism for businesses to manage and procure staffing services. A VMS can facilitate the recruitment process, track candidates, consolidate billing, and help make significant enhancements in reporting.
If staff members are not using your VMS, they may have a deleterious effect on your business. When employees go rogue and “fly under the radar” of your VMS, the consequences can make the quality of your company’s overall patient care seem…well…roguish. Here are just a few things that can go awry:
- Mistakes are more likely to be made. Using a VMS streamlines the onboarding or orientation process, meaning transitioning is simpler and more efficient. The onboarding process is one of the key steps to ensuring the success of a new hire. If this process is neglected or managed poorly, job performance will suffer. Often when there is subpar job performance from contingent workers when compared to their regular staff, there is a correlation to a sloppy, rushed, or inadequate onboarding process.
Healthcare providers with a standard onboarding or orientation practice via a VMS tend to have consistent quality of employee performance. This means that certain criteria specific to a healthcare facility or unit must be met in order for a new worker to begin an assignment. A VMS ensures a new hire’s familiarity with systems and procedures that might be unique to the facility. If workers are thrown into the mix with little guidance, mistakes are more likely to be made. - Employees with a history of poor job performance are used more often than they should be. Tracking the job performance of rogue staff, or any other contingent staff for that matter, is more difficult without a VMS. Because of the mutually beneficial nature of a contingent labor arrangement, contingent staff tend to stick around and continue working at the same facility for as long as possible. Over time, the number and quality of assignments completed by the employee can be assessed and tracked. This track record can indicate the overall quality of care that a candidate can provide.If VMS technology is utilized to evaluate a worker after each assignment, a performance history can be maintained along with an aggregate grade or score for that employee. This takes the guesswork out of the contingent hiring process. Over time, employees with poor job performance are automatically used less frequently and even cycled out. Those who deliver the best quality work are kept in rotation and utilized consistently.
- Your company’s employee float pool shrinks. Many healthcare systems choose to rely on their own full- or part-time employees to fill openings in their schedules. They do this by either leveraging existing staff resources or by building a float pool of workers that are specifically designated to move from one assignment to another when the need arises.The more rogue employees you have “flying under the radar,” the fewer employees you will have in your VMS, and the smaller your float pool of vetted employees will be. This means when a job vacancy or new assignment pops up, your options for moving the right employees — that is, those with a history of good job performance tracked by your VMS — will be even more limited. Don’t let your employees go rogue. Let ShiftWise’s VMS technology help your business grow by managing your contingent labor in one easy-to-use, customizable system.
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