HR opportunity and challenges: planning for the future today

Yesterday I met with the staff development and human resources managers at a nursing facility that has just signed on to use our online CNA training program. It’s always fun to talk with managers who are excited about their work, and excited about introducing online learning to their team.

We talked about how many people they had applying for training – more than they’ve ever had before. The local community college had called them to see if they could train even more students, since they had over 400 applicants for their college-sponsored CNA training course.

It was refreshing to hear these people talk about the realities of the current hiring climate. They realized that it’s one thing to hire people; it’s another thing to retain them, especially when the economy swings – and it will, sooner or later, swing.

These individuals recognize that today they have an opportunity to hire an unusually high level of talent. We all remember the days – seems like yesterday – when we were into the “any warm body” mode of hiring, simply to fill essential positions.

We have a window of opportunity to hire exceptional people and create an environment for them to bond with us. Hopefully, we can help them fall in love with caring for seniors like we love it. We can help them find the rewards that come with making a difference in the lives of people, not just selling coffee or burgers for an extra 25 cents an hour.

In our online training programs we focus a lot on the emotional aspect of learning. We believe that people don’t truly master the caring skills unless they also begin to internalize the compassion for caring. We want them to fall in love with their job and with their clients.

These managers, completely new to the idea of online training for caregivers, are excited about offering something new; something different. They’re excited about being perceived as a company that is willing to adopt new technology to improve the level of training, and to achieve a cost-effective solution to necessary training.

They believe, as we do, that these are a few of the steps they can take to build a team – today – that will stay even when the job outlook improves and they can make more money elsewhere.