Skills shortage in the healthcare sector

The study "Skilled Labour Shortage Index Switzerland 2022" by the Adecco Group Switzerland and the University of Zurich shows that the skills shortage in Switzerland is back in full force and was more pronounced in 2022 than ever before. After a short-term easing during the Covid period, all industries are once again looking for more skilled workers due to the economic catch-up effect. It is hardly surprising that the occupational group of specialists in healthcare professions is most affected by this precarious situation. These are primarily people with a tertiary-level education - i.e. with an HF, FH, university or ETH degree. What can we do when the recruitment of specialised staff becomes almost impossible? We must do everything we can to retain our existing staff by ensuring that they are happy at work.

Referring to the work of the two motivation researchers Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, intrinsic motivation stands for the inner drive to do something that gives pleasure and in which you are absorbed. The more intrinsically motivated employees are, the happier they are in their job. Intrinsic motivation can be positively influenced by social integration, personal competence and personal autonomy. In terms of duty planning, topics such as employee participation and self-determination contribute to the issue of autonomy. This raises the question: Are all employees the same in this respect? Do they all want to participate in the scheduling process to the same extent? The answer is provided by the Haufe quadrant (see diagram), which describes the relationship between employees and organisational design.

If you look at the Y-axis "organisational design", operations in the healthcare sector are usually at the controlled level, which describes a classic, hierarchical model. However, the X-axis "Role of employees" cannot be assigned across the board. There are employees who feel comfortable in the role of "implementer" and want less creativity and flexibility. Others, on the other hand, feel more comfortable as "creators" and want exactly the opposite. Of course, the model is a highly simplified representation of reality and there are numerous intermediate stages in practice. It is crucial to understand that employees have different needs when it comes to participation.

The ingenious thing about participative duty scheduling models is that the different needs of employees can be taken into account. Long, medium and short-term planning periods are considered. Even today, employees can usually play a major role in long-term planning, for example by requesting holidays or unpaid leave. In medium-term planning, i.e. classic monthly shift planning, they can contribute certain Friday or shift requests in many operations and thus participate. However, the level of participation in this process can often be greatly expanded, and in most institutions the opportunities for participation end at this point. In order to give employees as much flexibility as possible even after the roster has been published and thus also satisfy the "designers", tools should be provided that allow employees to optimise their roster at short notice. This could, for example, be mapped via a duty marketplace or a predefined duty swap process. The exact processes behind this can be defined individually by Operations. Most planning software tools on the market support such participation models.

Thanks to the long-term planning security and optional short-term flexibility, both "implementers" and "designers" feel that they are being taken into account. The opportunity for participation is increased, which leads to a stronger sense of autonomy. This in turn increases intrinsic motivation and makes employees happier. What this means for companies is obvious: greater effectiveness and therefore better economic performance.