Behind Every Resume Is A Potential Customer...and Karma.

I recently heard from an executive colleague who, thanks to a merger, found herself looking for her next opportunity. Her story, probably depressingly familiar to many of you, was all about the big black hole of rudeness and non-responsiveness that so often sums up employers' attitudes toward candidates.

This colleague, thinking she'd see the healthcare world from a new vantage point, pursued opportunities with consultants, IT vendors, architects and other suppliers who, far from appreciating her solid resume, were like the 3 Stooges of clueless.

So back to a senior health system role she went, WHERE SHE NOW INITIATES AND MANAGES RFPs FOR SOME OF THE VERY SAME COMPANIES who wouldn't talk to her as a candidate, but profess their LOVE for her now that she's got money to spend on their services.

Not gonna happen. Any guesses who's off the RFP list?

I smiled when I heard her story, imagining the BusDev people working hard to grow the revenue pipeline, all the while being quietly sabotaged by their HR team.  Sure, you can't hire everybody, nor should you.  But karma is real and, when given an opportunity, why not make a new friend instead of an enemy?

From the New York Times comes a modest proposal: treat job-hunters like, well, customers!

"...in the whirlwind of daily activity, a business can lose sight that there are real people behind all those résumés. And how the company treats those people, well before any of them become employees, says a lot about it, its brand and its values.

"In the current labor market, where there is a glut of supply, perhaps some companies think they have the upper hand and can afford to skimp on the niceties. They are mistaken, though, because every economic cycle eventually turns, and there is always competition for the best talent, regardless of economic conditions.

"It’s for this reason that human-resources professionals and company leaders need to treat job candidates like customers."

Pay attention to job-hunters? Treat candidates like customers? They're a dime a dozen, so where's the benefit in that, you ask? "Oh but we're terribly busy HR professionals..." you say? Sure, go ahead and kiss that brand promise goodbye, along with the last remaining thimble-full of your business model's growth potential.

"A Stanford Business School case study found that some companies get (the concept of treating job hunters like customers) and capitalize on it. Southwest Airlines, for one, recognizes that employment candidates are not only career customers — but that they could also be, or become, customers of the airline.

"Southwest’s core principles of respect permeate its recruiting, where there is a focus on making sure that no applicant feels inferior or rejected. Many Southwest job applicants have a better experience being rejected by Southwest than they have being hired by other companies. As a result, Southwest gets the best people, and it shows in its superior financial results.

"Another example comes from the food industry, where I recently heard a story about a manager from Nabisco who was attending a human-resources industry conference. When he declared that his company responded to every résumé it received — solicited and unsolicited — he was met with incredulous stares from his peers.

'“Why respond to every résumé when that’s clearly not necessary?” someone asked.

"The Nabisco manager smiled and replied, “ Because — everyone eats cookies."

I love that: "...because everyone eats cookies." And they always remember how you made them feel.

The Takeaway: Has your growth trajectory flattened out? Nosedived? Check how your organization treats job-seekers. Go online and try out your HR Department's "application engine." Investigate how (or, if) you communicate with applicants. Undoubtedly, it's no better than how you treat customers...more's the pity. How can your organization surpass HR's performance when it's THEM supplying the talent? Wouldn't they be the lowest common denominator?

Regrettably, I don't foresee it changing until a generation of HR "professionals" and recruiters spend a few months themselves searching for a new job, sending resumes into the black hole, dealing with recalcitrant web sites. At that point they may figure it out. Until then, as Depeche Mode might have said it, Enjoy the Silence.

More on my feelings about HR, here.

10:55 AM

NFP Hospitals Hit the Wall

Have nonprofit healthcare providers' improvement efforts hit a wall?  Standard & Poor's Rating Services seems to think so, in this story (via Reuters.)   From the story:

"Adding to pressures, inpatient volumes are dropping.

"With pending budget sequestration at the federal level, health reform implementation, and continuing pressure on state budgets, we believe the next several years will be difficult for most providers," said S&P. "Furthermore, we believe that the improvements of the past several years may be reaching their limit and thus will not be able to keep pace with longer-term revenue pressures, especially in light of weaker volumes."

"S&P says more rating downgrades are possible for not-for-profit healthcare systems over the next two years. It noted that the proportion of systems with positive or stable outlooks is shrinking, which "supports our opinion the multiyear trend of improved financial ratios is unlikely to continue."

Sooner or later providers, notoriously risk adverse, will be forced to admit that cautious incrementalism is little more than death by a thousand cuts - a slow death, but death nevertheless.

Many see salvation in mergers and/or acquisition.  Putting a bunch of soon-to-be-crummy balance sheets together doesn't make the collective any less crummy.  And, usually, the consultants, lawyers and integration costs eat up the first 5 years of savings from any so-called "synergies."

Many see salvation in shiny new buildings with private rooms and in-lobby waterfalls.  Few will find the new business volumes to justify more balance sheet leverage (see "crummy" - above.)

And many see salvation in massive IT investments- Big Data, EMRs, portals, etc.  I hope they're right.  I fear they're not, but it'll take five years to really know how soundly these systems were reviewed, acquired and implemented.  Sitting here it's easy to predict more failures than successes.

In the meantime, under either fee for service or risk-based reimbursement, a "low delivered cost" position looks better and better.  It's the only strategy offering a possibility of success regardless of scenario.  But here providers have been far too timid, scrabbling in the dirt for a few percentage points of margin improvement instead of challenging themselves to find 30%, 40%, even 50% savings on an episode of care.

They're not going to achieve that by cutting the marketing budget (again) or designing buildings offering more of the same.

No, it won't happen until providers finally do hit that wall.  Maybe then they'll realize that the only path to survival requires getting radical about lots of things -  including ditching that leadership box in which they find themselves.

(Photo credit: Magdalena Gmur, Creative Commons)

3:11 PM

Hospital Marketers: TIme To Own the Growth Agenda

Hospitals' salad days are over, at least if you believe the breathless headlines.  Gone are the days when business models could be built simply by chasing Medicare's hot reimbursement du jour. 

Unfortunately, more than business models were built on such crabbed thinking. Where Medicare led, capital structures, facilities, strategic thinking, indeed the very definition of 'success' were sure to follow. 

And follow they did. Massive was the party. Crushing are the debt loads and mediocre the results. Naturally a pounding hangover ensues, though the remedy - perhaps a 'rescuing'  full-asset merger - is neither quick nor painless.

(Example: Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare's dalliance with Northwestern Memorial HealthCare.  “I think having that new facility is going to be a real challenge for (Elmhurst)  financially,” says my friend Brian Sanderson, a partner at Oak Brook-based accounting firm Crowe Horwath LLP) 

"We've nothing left to cut!" is the common refrain - common, predictable and mostly untrue. Still, organizations make their own reality and, if you believe you're out of ideas, you are. 

So might I suggest it's time to GROW? And by growth, I don't mean (say it quickly so it blurs together) "Let's grow Orth-onc-diac!" Like every other hospital on the planet. No, that party's long over.   Incremental value lies in completely new directions. 

New directions begging for someone to reframe, to call 'time-out' on the B.S. of "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you!"  Someone to innovate and incubate new generations of business models.  Someone to OWN THE GROWTH AGENDA.  Why not you? 

Time for idea-driven marketers to leave the past behind and take a big step forward.

(Connect with me on Linkedin.) 

10:52 AM