If you are an executive at a healthcare staffing company you are likely using some sort of survey or feedback system to gauge attitudes and measure traits of the temporary workers your firm is placing on assignment. At Staffing Industry Analysts, we conduct an annual survey of roughly 4,000 US temporary workers in conjunction with our “Best Staffing Firms to Work For” competition. The results of that study recently published in our 2018 Temporary Worker Survey report. In this study, roughly 450 respondents (12%) worked in healthcare occupations. While this sample may not be large enough to draw precise conclusions on the total pool of healthcare temporary workers, it is large enough to suggest some noticeable differences between temporary workers in healthcare versus those in other professions. We discuss a few examples below.

When asked, “What is your preferred work status?,” 78% of temporary workers in the overall survey indicated regular full-time employment and 6% indicated temporary assignments via an agency. However, for temporary workers in healthcare, 56% indicated full-time employment and 25% identified temporary assignments as their preferred mode of work.

Similarly, when asked about their openness to accepting another temporary assignment, 74% of healthcare temporary workers reported “yes” and 5% indicated “no,” as shown in the accompanying graph. For comparison, in the overall survey, 61% of temporary workers reported “yes” and 11% said “no.”

When your current/most recent temp assignment ends, will you be open to getting another temporary assignment?  (Healthcare temporary workers)

The survey results indicate a greater affinity toward and acceptance of agency temporary work among healthcare workers compared to other occupations. This suggests that healthcare staffing firms have achieved a unique degree of success in normalizing temporary work and providing a satisfying experience for workers. It also highlights the importance of identifying those 25% of healthcare temporary workers that prefer working on a temporary basis, in order to curate a pool of highly engaged talent that wants to be re-deployed to future assignments.

In addition to the topic discussed above, the temporary workers survey sheds light on healthcare temporary worker attitudes about use of staffing firm websites and apps, use of human cloud platforms, opinions on advances in automation, and satisfaction ratings and advice for staffing firms and buyer clients. The complete 199-page report is available to our corporate members here.