What makes Trusted stand out amongst the various online platforms entering the staffing market?
Our technology strips out the bureaucracy and outdated processes associated with traditional staffing, so that we can more quickly match healthcare facilities with a highly qualified candidate pool. We’ve also invested heavily in our onboarding process -- which can often be the most painful, time intensive part of hiring in healthcare -- to make things like licensing, compliance, credentialing and more as seamless as possible. In healthcare staffing, getting people into new roles quickly can literally mean the difference between life and death, as we’ve seen very clearly over the last year. We’re very proud of the fact that we’ve been able to be very nimble since COVID-19 hit and to quickly match travel nurses with hospitals in hotspots. At the height of the pandemic, we were able to onboard nurses into new roles in just 13 days vs. the industry average of six weeks, something truly unheard of in our industry.
How important are MSPs for your business? What is your advice to staffing operators when considering participating in an MSP program?
Our MSP partners’ expertise in healthcare staffing and the relationships that they have with hospitals make them an invaluable part of our business. They’re able to tell us exactly what the facilities are looking for in candidates so that we can quickly find the right matches. And at the end of the day, we share a value proposition around making access to contingent labor more efficient.
In terms of advice for other operators, I would recommend understanding if there is a tiering system in place for any MSPs you work with, and knowing what the expectations are to become a tier-1 staffing provider.
What is your view on remote work in staffing?
At Trusted, we’re big fans of remote work. Prior to the pandemic, 60 percent of our employees were already working remotely, so the transition to being completely distributed has been relatively seamless and has given us an advantage over competitors who are used to the whole team sharing the same physical space. We believe that the key is to be intentional and dedicate resources to build the technical and cultural infrastructure. We’re very thoughtful about our communication to ensure that everyone gets access to the same information at the same time, so that even when some of our employees do go back into the office, those who are working remotely never feel “out of the loop” or like second class citizens.
Are you considering any technology investments this year? What technology platforms would you recommend to other staffing operators?
Google Hangouts, Asana and Slack are key parts of our every employee’s internal workflow. We’ve also invested in technology that helps us stay connected while everyone is working from home. We use a Slack plug-in called Donuts that randomly matches employees for weekly 1:1s, and we also use Lattice for weekly pulse checks, so the HR and executive team knows how the company is feeling and if there are any issues that need to be addressed.
We’ve been building out our own technology, particularly our credentialing platform, in response to the ongoing changes that have been made around nurse licensing across states and the specific requirements of each hospital. We also started working with TrueWork last spring. Before we integrated their API, we were manually verifying upwards of a dozen past positions for a single nurse. Now we’re able to verify employment history, work credentials, and criminal history in an average of just 22 hours.
What is your go to place for news and advice on new trends in the staffing market?
I read Staffing Industry Analysts, the American Staffing Association’s newsletter and Becker’s Hospital Review on a regular basis.