How Expert Recruitment Simplifies Non-Clinical Staffing in Healthcare

At every healthcare facility in Ireland, a network of non-clinical staff are working hard behind the scenes to ensure the smooth running of medical services. Recruiting and retaining these valuable employees is not always easy however, which makes workforce planning tricky. By providing temporary work solutions designed specifically for the public sector, Unijobs offers an innovative solution. 

From finance managers and HR executives to IT support and catering crew, our expert recruitment team understand the non-clinical positions you need to fill, the skills and qualifications required, and the speed at which you need to move. And because we are a public sector organisation, we can provide flexible, temporary staffing as a shared, non-profit service. To understand the benefits of our tailored recruitment service, let’s take a look at some of the biggest challenges facing non-clinical staffing in healthcare organisations today. 

A service under pressure

The prognosis for Ireland’s healthcare sector is not great right now. With an aging population and increasing patient numbers, government figures highlight increasing pressure on healthcare staff. Budget shortfalls and significant wage increases in the private sector have exacerbated these challenges, leading to persistent workforce shortages in both the health service and care sector. 

Clearly, staff shortages are a problem for clinical teams, but they also cause havoc for the many ‘invisible’ support staff working in non-clinical roles. Here, a lack of adequate staffing leads to potential disruption in service delivery and a drop in the overall quality of healthcare services. 

After all, without an effective admin team, doctors and consultants don’t know which patient they are seeing next, infections increase due to insufficient cleaning, and patients suffer due to poor nutrition. Meanwhile for those tasked with workforce management, a lack of available non-clinical staff results in increased costs and decreased productivity. This can include understaffing, overstaffing, slow recruitment and poor resource allocation. 

Implementing Sláintecare 

The Department of Health and the HSE are responding to some of these challenges with the introduction of the Sláintecare reform package. This aims to provide a single, universal health service for all, providing the right care, in the right place, at the right time. It should help to deal with issues such as high costs and long treatment waiting times by providing better community care. 

In order to implement such a comprehensive program, healthcare staffing executives need access to a large and flexible workforce. Hospitals will need to hire additional staff and improve workforce planning to handle increased patient volumes and, crucially, they will need to boost non-clinical staffing to facilitate these changes with a responsive administrative and IT infrastructure. 

Digital skills shortage 

Underpinning the transformation of the health service is an increasing emphasis on digital technologies. The Digital Health Framework for Ireland 2024-2030, for example, sets out a roadmap to digitally enhance health services through the roll-out of a patient app and a Shared Care Record, which aims to integrate patient records no matter which part of the health service they engage with. 

Electronic health records, telemedicine initiatives and cloud computing can all improve the quality of care delivered to patients, but adopting these new technologies calls for new skills and a focus on recruiting IT staff to work within the health service. 

It’s important to note that as healthcare becomes increasingly data-driven, so hiring staff that can manage and maximise patient data becomes essential. Unfortunately, talent shortages related to these niche roles are acute, often exacerbated by salary disparity with the private sector where pay is more competitive. 

Flexible recruitment for non-clinical public sector jobs 

As experts in public-sector recruitment, we understand just how challenging it can be to ensure your healthcare teams are always equipped with the right non-clinical staff – in the right place, at the right time. 

Your service needs can change quickly, but at Unijobs, we are able to provide flexible, responsive and timely solutions, whether you need to fill 1 or 100 positions. We can deliver appropriate recruitment strategies for all kinds of non-clinical roles from IT experts to hygiene attendants. And with access to a pool of pre-vetted, high-calibre candidates just a click away, you can get down to the important task of increasing productivity and improving patient outcomes. 

To find out how partnering with Unijobs could help enhance your temporary recruitment efforts, both for flexible non-clinical placements and transfers to permanent positions, contact our expert team today.