ACT Launches Skill-Enhancement System for Healthcare Employees

March 24, 2005

IOWA CITY, Iowa—HR and training executives in healthcare, an industry plagued by workforce shortages, now have targeted tools to reduce turnover and hire skilled employees. ACT today launched "Healthcare Readiness Systems," the first in a line of ACT workforce development services designed for a specific industry.

The Department of Labor reports that half of the 20 fastest-growing careers in the U.S. are in the healthcare field, yet 80 percent of the industry is facing workforce shortages. Hiring, training, and retaining qualified entry-level employees is a critical problem for hospitals and other healthcare providers.

"This system will solve some of the problems that keep healthcare executives awake at night—notably high turnover and skill gaps among entry-level professional employees," said Michael Eisenstein, president and chief operating officer of ACT's Workforce Development Division. "This marks an evolution in a program that has worked for many companies across the nation to increase employee retention and productivity, and produce a healthier bottom line."

"Healthcare Readiness Systems" includes several components:

Needs analysis—Analyzing the training needs and skill benchmarks for particular job positions.
Skill assessments—Data-driven decision-making tools to determine whether an employee has the necessary foundational reading, mathematics and thinking skills critical to the performance on the job.
Training—Targeted development programs for individual employees, based on identified skill gaps.

The core of the system is WorkKeys for Healthcare, a job skill exam system based on ACT's WorkKeys assessment system. Users of the original WorkKeys system have reported significantly lower turnover, higher productivity and reduced workforce errors when using the tests for hiring and incumbent training purposes.

"It's difficult to train healthcare employees how to insert an IV or read a medical chart if they don't have foundational skills to build upon," said Eisenstein. "ACT's new system is designed to pinpoint training needs by starting at the foundation of what employees need to learn."

Later this year, ACT will launch "Workforce Readiness Systems" for several more industries, including information technology and manufacturing, as well as new tools for the development of employees who speak English as a second language.