Healthcare Staffing Report: Dec. 4, 2014

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Health temps less satisfied than industrial, other staffing categories

Healthcare temps are generally satisfied with their staffing agencies, though they are the least satisfied among major occupations, according to our recently released 2014 Temporary Worker Survey. In this survey of more than 7,000 temporary workers from 110 staffing companies, one of the many questions we asked temporary agency workers was how likely they would be to recommend their staffing agency employer to a friend or colleague, 0 for “not at all likely” and 10 for “extremely likely.” We then subtracted the detractors (percent of respondents scoring six or lower) from the promoters (percent of respondents scoring nine or ten) to calculate a net promoter score (NPS). An NPS can range from -100 percent (if all respondents are detractors) to 100 percent (if all respondents are promoters).

For the category “Healthcare practitioner/worker”, the NPS was 33 percent, indicating that there were more promoters than detractors, which is generally good news. However, it is notable that this category had the lowest NPS of all categories in our survey. Even categories such as “Industrial” and “Office & administrative support worker”, generally associated with lower-pay positions, had higher scores.

Whether healthcare workers have higher expectations or whether healthcare staffing has inherent qualities that make it less desirable warrants further analysis. One piece of information, though, did come out of a more granular look at the healthcare category. When we look specifically at specialist firms (staffing companies that specialize in placing a particular type of skill) as opposed to generalist firms (staffing companies that place workers in a wide variety of occupations), small specialist agencies in healthcare received an NPS of 59 percent, compared to large specialist agencies which received an NPS of 37 percent. Moreover, healthcare workers were unique in their preference for smaller agencies.

Further insight on the perspective of the temporary worker can be found in our 2014 Temporary Worker Survey report of results.