The Compelling Case for Automated Mobile Credentialing

Credentialing.

Upon typing that word, the groan from staffing teams up and down the country was almost audible.

There’s no question that everyone recognizes the importance of credentialing, particularly in such a highly-skilled, high-stakes field as healthcare. It’s the only way that you can be sure your candidate has the education, qualifications, and professional memberships necessary for the job at hand. But collecting and verifying this information remains the bane of many a staffing firm’s existence.

The endless procession of calls, emails, low-res images, and corrupted files. The reminder upon reminder sent to the employee, as the clock ominously ticks toward the deadline. It’s a process plagued with annoyance, frustration, and inefficiency.

But it needn’t be.

Automated mobile technology offers an alternate credentialing reality – one where the process is completed entirely by the candidate, in mere minutes, and via an experience that borders on enjoyable.

The arguments for mobile credentialing are many and varied, so let’s take a look at a handful of the most compelling.

Smartphone cameras simplify the process

Smartphones are modern Swiss army knives, packing a barely believable punch into something that fits snugly in your pocket. Arguably the most useful tool – and one that all but buried Kodak (RIP) – is the camera. While it may not be immediately apparent, this little feature is capable of doing so much more than taking perfectly pouty selfies.

Combine a smartphone camera with mobile credentialing, and you have a way to instantly capture and log licenses and certifications. Sprinkle in some automation technology, and you’re able to instantly verify the information on important and traditionally time-consuming documents, like section 2 of the i9.

No more scanning or faxing. No more barely legible images or missing attachments. You get all the information you need, gathered and delivered instantly.

A better, more engaging experience

Traditional credentialing is at best inefficient and at worst traumatic, not just for the staffing firm, but for the candidate too. It’s a process with endless lag, with one party forever waiting on an action from the other.

Mobile credentialing fixes all that. Firstly, it converts the process to a mobile-friendly application – native or responsive, there’s no wrong answer – all but removing clunky email chains and inconvenient phone calls. Secondly, it essentially takes the staffing firm out of the equation, putting an instantly responsive AI in its place. Thirdly, it can be gamified through things like green ticks and ‘percentage complete’ status bars, incentivizing candidates to complete the process.

All this adds up to greater efficiency, higher completion rates, quicker turnarounds, and a far more pleasurable candidate experience.

It’s the way the world is heading

Mobile devices already account for over half of the world’s web traffic, and that number is only set to rise. Our phones are slowly becoming more extensions of ourselves than pieces of consumer technology.

Mobile increasingly represents the path of least resistance. Provide your candidates with a mobile process, and they'll fly through it. The key to success is to ensure that it is not just mobile-friendly, but mobile responsive. If you achieve that, whether via native (downloaded) or responsive (web browser) app, you'll see error rates dramatically decrease, and completion rates dramatically increase.

Most importantly, this is all something that candidates want. No fewer than 70% of healthcare professionals try to complete their credentialing and new hire tasks via mobile. At this point in time, most find that their firms don’t offer the functionality. Mobile credentialing is still a unique selling point.

But it won’t be for long.

It's better business

This brings us neatly to our final point. Mobile credentialing isn’t just better for the candidate – it’s better for your firm. By taking care of the things that make your team groan, you free them up to concentrate on the more interesting and higher-value aspects of staffing – the things that can’t be automated. You’re also able to do more with less, scaling your reach and your business, but without the need to scale your team. Reducing burnout and drag is the only way forward.

And you do all this while enhancing your candidate experience and positioning yourself as a recruiter of choice in the process.

Mobile credentialing is the inevitable future of healthcare staffing. Whether you take the opportunity to be an early adopter now, or hold off and get forced to play catch up later, is entirely up to you.