The Future of Careers in Healthcare: Career Pathways Transform Society

Healthcare is the largest employer in the US. It's also the most important, troubled, and mission-critical industry. In our article on the cure for the healthcare crisis, we quantified the massive gap in healthcare: 1 in 3 nursing positions (or 2.1 million nursing jobs) will be vacant unless we make dramatic changes. This is not just bad news, it's catastrophic for healthcare and for society. Like it or not, some of our loved ones - parents, friends, spouses, children, or other relatives - are bound to need healthcare for some reason.

Solving the Critical Clinical Capacity Issue

Is this problem solvable? It is, but not with recruiting alone - nursing positions continue to lead the open jobs ranking with 600-800k positions open any time.

Recruiting solutions can only solve for 10-15% of the problem - because the talent out there just does not exist.

For the first time in 17 years, the acute nursing shortage has now surpassed financial worries on CEO agendas.

Rather than just focusing on staffing excellence, solving the clinical shortages requires to think differently and act differently, using a systemic approach to people and talent. We call this the 4 R Framework of Systemic People Solutions. While recruiting and retaining people will always be necessary, the more strategic solutions lie in reskilling people into hard-to-fill clinical jobs and redesigning work for the future, using automation and AI to streamline.

At the heart of this is talent intelligence to determine skills, roles, and organizational solutions to build the workforce of the future.

Innovation in Reskilling: No-Cost Education

Reskilling solutions are the most sustainable and strategic approach to increase workforce capacity, accounting for 500k-700k nursing positions. But how should companies reskill? Where does education fit in? Can people afford to reskill while working in a lower-paying job?

One of the barriers to education for our entry-level positions is that candidates couldn’t see themselves paying $5,000 out of pocket and then waiting for six months after they finish the semester to be reimbursed.

Olesea Azevedo, CHRO of AdventHealth

Forward-thinking organizations like AdventHealth, Providence, or Mercy all counter that with educational programs that work for cash-strapped frontline workers to fulfill their career dream, taking advantage of a $5250 tax credit so it pays for itself. This no-cost education can be life-altering for workers.

But while 61% of healthcare organizations provide these programs, only 8% feel their employees actually know about the educational benefits.

From Career Paths to Career Pathways

That's the problem with most educational programs: they allow an already advantaged workforce to add another degree to their pedigree. A business major working in marketing can add an MBA to move up the marketing ranks. A software engineer may add another certification in a new language to increase their earning potential. These vertical moves are career paths (moving up the corporate ladder), and while they are nice for employees, they don't really solve the massive capacity gaps in healthcare.

On the other hand, career pathways support the development of new skills and help individuals transition into credentialed new jobs or roles which offer better pay, growth potential and business impact. Think janitor to nursing aid, warehouse worker to medical assistant, receptionist to licensed nurse practitioner. It's the road from a dead-end, draining, minimum-wage job to a mission-first career with unlimited potential - all paid by the company.

Career pathways are life-altering for employees, transformational for companies, and groundbreaking for communities and society. No wonder many CEOs aim to make them their legacy: the impact is enormous.

Six Steps to Clinical Career Pathways

Building career pathways is not easy but it pays off. Educational providers like EdAssist by Bright Horizons or Guild work hard to pave the road into fulfilling clinical jobs, helping people find their calling and accomplish their mission in life.

Talent intelligence on skill and roles trends, adjacencies, transferrable and differentiating skills, and role clusters makes this a project in data-based decision making, not just a guessing game - and we did just that as part of our Global Workforce Intelligence Project.

In our in-depth guide to the future of careers in healthcare, we built out each of these steps based on interviews with 20 of the most forward-thinking CHROs in healthcare and billions of data points from the Eightfold Talent Intelligence platform - and the insights might surprise you. For example, clinical skills alone are not differentiating for nurses - it's the communication and customer service skills combined with next-gen tech skills that matter more.

The right education partner is key

While this may look simple, it's a very complex process. Consider the many needs of your adult learner population who go back to school while working full time:

• How will they be able to balance their work commitments with childcare, dependent care, financial success, and the overall needs of adult learners?
• How can they find role models and coaches to help them with on-the-ground questions when going back to school?
• What are the right schools and educational programs?
• And how do people get inspired to even start a program?

The right partner with deep industry expertise, analytical capabilities, and even custom marketing can make or break program success. If you are in HR or learning, they will help you build community and learn from others and become your trusted advisor.

Storytelling for Success

One of the most critical areas for program adoption is storytelling - helping people identify role models in the jobs they aspire to so they get inspired to aim higher.

After all, the best program is not worth much if it's not adopted. Easier placement of people into roles once they attain their educational goals, a facilitated movement, and consistent measurement and review are key too.

Time for Career Pathways

No-cost education embedded in guided career pathways can pave the road from a catastrophic clinical capacity gap for healthcare organizations - while also creating a path to financial success and a future-proof career for employees and changing communities.

"I'm the first in my family to get a degree, and it shows my children that they can do it too. I feel I am setting a great example for them and it gives me hope for their future", as a student in the nursing career pathway program said.

A Call to Action in Healthcare and Beyond

Driven by necessity, healthcare CHROs are at the forefront of it all, and HR in healthcare is leading the way in terms of innovating on traditional HR. Building career pathways with cost-free education provides a strategic avenue for healthcare CHROs to impact individuals to further their careers while also solving critical talent shortages— and thus making a massive contribution to one of the biggest problems in society today.

If you are a leader in another industry - this applies to you, too. The impact to be made is enormous, and the cost to your organization is limited because of tax credits. It's a true win/win for everybody.

Where to go next

• Read Josh Bersin's article on career pathways and listen to the podcast
• Read the article on the urgent clinical crisis in healthcare
• Find out more about the full report on the future of careers in healthcare, including in-depth case studies from AdventHealth, Mercy, and Providence (reserved for corporate members of The Josh Bersin Company)