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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Staying Always-Ready: How Effective Workforce Management Becomes a Strategic Advantage
00:13:46
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- [00:00]
A
Hi everyone, this is Lucas Vaz with Becker's Healthcare. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series. It's great to have you. An exciting topic today, how effective workforce management becomes a strategic advantage. And I'm very excited to be joined by Julie Walker. She's the CEO of Propelis. Julie, thanks so much for being here today. It's great to have you.
- [00:21]
B
Thank you so much, Lucas and everyone. Thank you for being here. My name is Julie Walker, CEO of Propelis and I love finding better ways to bridge the gap between technology and the people who make health care work. At Propelis, we back people powering health care so they can focus on what they do best. We've built the workforce intelligence infrastructure that unifies critical links between regulators, employers and professionals. And last but not least, our mission is to move beyond static workforce management toward a system that is seamless, connected and deeply human.
- [00:58]
A
And I'm sure we'll touch on a lot of this here in our conversation today. You come to the podcast with some great research and I'm excited to talk about that research, specifically from your State of Workforce compliance in 2025 survey that showed that 77% of healthcare leaders are not confident in their organization's approach to workforce compliance. And I'd love to know from you and your work what's driving that confidence gap right now, of course.
- [01:29]
B
Well, the 77% lack of confidence isn't a reflection of leadership capacity, in my opinion. It's really a reflection of a systemic mismatch. Think about this. We are trying to manage 2026 workforce fluidity with old infrastructure, old technology. We've historically operated in what we like to call snapshot reality. Verifying credentials at the point of hire or perhaps during an annual window just isn't good enough. In today's mobile environment, that data begins to decay the moment it's collected. For any healthcare executive, I think about the confidence gap is actually most times a visibility gap. Many of them feel exposed because they know their data is static and really needs to be dynamic. And often their manual processes and disconnected workflows, they can't keep pace with the speed of the modern workforce.
- [02:29]
A
I like to still remind people sometimes that people still Send faxes in 2026. So given the vulnerability that you just outlined, what can organizations do to become better at this in 2026 and beyond and become more confident?
- [02:47]
B
Yeah, great point on faxes. I think the same with paper, really. To move towards certainty and to become more confident, we must replace guesswork and move towards Making workforce compliance a real time source of truth. This means leaders need to prioritize what we have learned through our survey and other inputs. There are really three key shifts. The first one that we think about and talk about often is workforce visibility. Confidence requires a unified, real time view of essential data. That means licenses, certifications, heart cards, health and safety status, employees, competencies, and other credentials. There's a lot and you need it for really your entire workforce. When you centralize this intelligence, you move from the reactive auditing, oh my gosh, they're here to proactive workforce management that ensures every member of your team, whether at the bedside or otherwise, is verified, safe and ready to work. The second item that we focus on is ongoing verification. The industry is quickly moving toward a gold standard of automated and continuous checks. They do this because they need to detect any change of information, particularly changes that can be adverse or otherwise avoided, such as sanctions and exclusions that truly require immediate action and decisions. And then relying on manual peer review, periodic checks and audits really creates a level of vulnerability that I think most healthcare organizations want to avoid. And number three is operational velocity. We have to eliminate unnecessary friction for our workforce in order to optimize where they're deployed, how they're working. And a great example is really, you know, they're typically complex layers of requirements in order to move a clinician from one facility to another across state lines. And there really is a tremendous opportunity to increase this operational velocity by automating these complex requirements. We need to be more confident when we deploy our workforce where they need to be safely, compliantly, and really instantly, without the guesswork.
- [05:06]
A
I'd love to dive a little bit deeper into some of these challenges you outlined. Some of them. They're obviously connected to experience as well, both for patients and employees, which is really, really crucial. What are, or to you personally, what are the most prominent workforce related compliance challenges right now for organizations too? And then again, how does that impact everything else, including patient employee experience?
- [05:31]
B
Lucas, let's be really clear. Managing today's health care workforce is no easy feat. It is incredibly challenging. And the way I see it is really what I'd like to call a triple burden. It's administrative, it's operational, and it's costly. First, you know, from an administrative weight perspective, administrative costs now account for over 40% of total hospital expenses. Think about that. Much of this is still manual. A good example being our survey found, was that 81% of organizations still verify required credentials quarterly, maybe annually, or only at the start of hire because it's too burdensome, it's too overwhelming for them and their employees. This leads directly into number two. The operational burden when checking for compliance is periodic. Healthcare organizations end up in a really reactive cycle. A good example is when they're forced to pull a nurse or a doctor from the floor right before their shift or even mid shift because they just realized that their license had expired. As you can imagine, this creates chaos, it creates dissatisfaction with the workforce and it also impacts those who are on the floor with increase workloads and of course can directly impact patient care. And then finally there's a cost burden. The cost of non compliance, we've learned, is three and a half times higher than maintaining a proactive environment between fines, cost of contract labor to fill the gaps. Our partners, our healthcare organizations, they're losing millions. That could also be avoidable. But in my opinion, the real tragedy is the human impact. Again, a good example that we've learned is nurses are now spending on average up to 25% of their shifts. So think about two plus hours every day on administrative tasks. By making compliance invisible through automation, we can give caregivers their time back and their focus back. And from a healthcare organization perspective, we can then move from a culture of policing of the I gotchas of the world, to that of proactive safety where we are on the side and championing our workforce.
- [07:51]
A
Yeah, I think bringing in the human element to the conversation is so crucial. I know we look at spreadsheets, we look at the roi, the financial piece of it, which is very, very important. But that human element that you just touched on is so critical as well as you're looking to 2026 and all of the things that you've just outlined? Right. What's the one thing for you that needs to shift in an organization's approach to compliance right now to make sure that this isn't an issue long term?
- [08:19]
B
Yes, this is a great question. I believe the fundamental shift for 2026 is truly moving from workforce compliance as a safety net to it being a strategy for clinical excellence. I think for too long we've treated compliance as a I've gotcha. Nobody feels good in those types of scenarios. And that's more of a mechanism to avoid fines, accreditation marks, stuff of that nature. But one thing I think is important to point out, as of January 1, 2026, the Joint Commission's National Performance Goal 12 really has officially elevated staffing and competency as a core safety metric. It is no longer about just having enough people on the floor. It's about proving these people have the specific structure, the credentials, the skills, the competencies required for the patients they serve. I think this is really a huge competitive advantage. We know retention is the number one concern for leaders right now. We saw that a spotlight on that during our survey. And again, by having clear, proactive visibility into your workforce or credentials or experience or skills, and everything that I highlighted before leadership can really start using this as a bridge to identify opportunities, upskill, retain, and advance their workforce.
- [09:43]
A
Julie, we're certainly not the only ones that are having this conversation. These conversations are happening for organizations across the country, and people know that this is something that needs to be addressed present and certainly in the future. As we wrap up our conversation today. Why do you think this remains such a persistent challenge in healthcare, specifically looking at workforce compliance? And again, you briefly touched on this, but I want to elaborate. What role does leadership play in prioritizing this and making sure that it goes above some of the other demands that exist for healthcare systems across the country?
- [10:24]
B
Yeah. Thank you, Lucas, for all those listening to the podcast, you know very well that compliance is a challenge because it is a moving target. It's continuously changing and evolving, and we're dealing with this shifting of regulations across multiple systems, states managed by a workforce that is more mobile and perhaps more exhausted than ever before to keep up with those requirements. And, you know, I think oftentimes it's treated as a seasonal event. It is an ongoing event, and how we can really continue to keep a pulse on the changing environment. And at the end of the day, a health care organization's most valuable commodity is is its reputation. You know, of course fines are painful, but losing the trust of your community is an existential crisis. And, you know, ultimately, leadership's job is to bridge the gap between compliance and clinical integrity. We believe that when you prioritize a seamless, proactive system, you're sending a clear message to your staff, your patients, your community that we value their safety enough to build it into the fabric of their very operations. We also believe that it's about moving from a culture of hope to one of great certainty. Ensuring the brand promise that you as a healthcare organization make to the world is always kept by every single person in your organization.
- [11:59]
A
You touched on a number of things, I think, that are very important for leadership in general, no matter where you are in this conversation itself. Well, Julie, it's so fantastic to have you on. I want to turn the floor over to you specifically reflecting on the conversation that we just had. Right. If there's one thing that you want the listeners to walk away with. From this conversation today, we covered a lot of ground. What would that be?
- [12:26]
B
I want to leave everyone with one simple truth. When you protect your people, they can protect your patients and your organization's future. The real value, I believe, in our conversation today isn't just about 2026 readiness or passing an audit. It's about recognizing that every minute a clinician spends on a manual compliance task is a minute lost to a patient or a minute lost to the rest that they so desperately need. My final takeaway is this. Make workforce compliance management invisible so your people can be visible. Use technology as that silent partner that handles all the data decay and the paperwork so your clinicians, your entire workforce can reclaim the human work that technology can't do. Thank you again so much, Lucas. It was a pleasure to be here.
- [13:25]
A
Yeah, it's so great to have you on Julie. And we also want to thank our podcast sponsor, Propelis. For more resources on what we discussed today, check the podcast description for links and certainly visit propelis.com you can tune into more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare by visiting our podcast page@beckershospitalreview.com.