By Ernest J. Paolini
This article is a part of the March/April 2022, Volume 34, Number 2, Audiology Today issue.
Everyone wants to be able to hire the right people because, in business, it all starts with building a great team. For an organizational leader, hiring the right people is critical and not always easy to accomplish. When we look at today’s employment landscape, and the workforce at large, there will soon be more job openings than candidates to fill them (pandemic economic interruptions notwithstanding).
It will be a difficult environment for employers to fill positions across the board. When we consider hearing-health care, things will get even more difficult because of pent-up patient demand, employees opting out of jobs or environments deemed risky, and the general dearth of licensed providers.
Estimates by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2021) suggest that, by 2029 the audiology field will experience job growth of 13 percent, which should result in 15,600 open audiologist positions.
The reality suggests that there will not be enough candidates to fill those jobs because there will not be enough licensed professionals in the field. There are only 74 four-year AuD programs in the United States (American Academy of Audiology, 2021) and class sizes are generally small. There may well be more audiologists retiring from, than entering, the profession over the next decade.
When we couple the dearth of provider talent with both the financial cost of bad hires, i.e., the cost of employee churn (e.g., fees paid, human capital involved with the onboarding process, and downtime to train), and the social costs (e.g., damage to staff morale, patients’ perceptions), we can see that the price of failure is quite clear.
Ultimately, to have a successful business, you need to be competitive in identifying, attracting, and hiring top talent. If you do not hire the best people, your competitors surely will. The upside is that, when you get it right and hire the best, you will be in a great position to develop the culture you need and become an “Employer of Choice” in hearing-health care.
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