The Importance of Bringing in Outside Talent to Complete Mission-Critical Projects
May 24, 2023
3 Minute Read
Over the past two years, many organizations have struggled to successfully complete their most important projects completed, and staffing shortages are often to blame. There are simply not enough people to get the work done.
To fill the gap, many healthcare organizations have turned to outside contractors and consultants. In our latest research1, 41% of healthcare respondents reported bringing in outside team members to help their teams finish mission-critical projects and deliver the expected results. The myriad benefits include:
- Enhancing current skills and bench strength
- Welcoming new perspectives
- Looking at projects with a critical eye
Cross-Pollination and Fresh Perspectives
Although your own employees offer a unique set of skills and experiences, there’s also a tendency to become stale and entrenched in the cultural thinking of the organization and the way it approaches problems. This can make it more difficult to effectively launch and execute project initiatives.
It’s not that current employees aren’t up to the job, but sometimes, you need a fresh perspective. Professionals from the outside aren’t burdened with pre-existing ideas about your company or the best way to get projects finished, so they can look at challenges in a different way and identify novel solutions and approaches that current employees may not have considered.
In other words, both sides can unlock untapped potential to makes solutions more viable.
Consultants often come from diverse industry backgrounds and have devised solutions that worked in other contexts — knowledge they can transfer to current problems in different corporate cultures. This approach can be so effective that organizations hire the outside consultants to take the lead in solving intractable project challenges. In our survey, 16% of healthcare executives reported turning over their entire project to an outside firm.
“Talent is the new ‘digital currency!’ Investing in reskilling or upskilling talent is costly and a long process for both employer and employee,” said Sachin Dev, RGP Vice President, Healthcare. “To keep up with the shifting landscape in healthcare, traditional learning, such as on-the-job training or continuing education, when combined with a fusion or hybrid team of internal and external talent, will yield far superior results and an excellent ROI for both employee and employer.”
Fostering Innovation and Creativity
Outside talent can also shake up the status quo and spark new creativity and innovative thinking. That spark can ignite a fire and open up revolutionary concepts for making transformational changes that can get projects back on track and completed — all of which can help get your company back on a path to revenue growth and long-term success.
“As healthcare organizations are constantly embracing new adaptive strategies to ensure competitiveness while their business, operating and service models are rapidly shifting, the need for top talent and hybrid or fusion teams is vital for the execution of mission-critical projects to drive innovation,” Sachin said.
By encouraging synergistic collaboration between existing employees and outside consultants, companies can allow unconventional thinking to emerge — and take a project from good to exceptional to finished.
Expert Knowledge and Specialization
Some mission-critical projects require unique and specialized skill sets. Hiring outside consultants specifically for their in-depth expertise and specialized knowledge can help you more effectively address the complex challenges your organization may face. By blending both existing employee skill sets along with notable outside talent, healthcare organizations will be better poised to solve problems and get complex projects completed.
And because outside consultants have specific expertise that they have honed for years, they can offer deep understanding and valuable insights to pinpoint issues, develop novel strategies, and streamline processes that result in significant revenue-generating discoveries.
Completing mission-critical projects post-pandemic can still be challenging given all the constraints that companies still face. Consider collaborating with outside consultants who can bring a wealth of knowledge, unique expertise and continuous learning into the culture. Companies benefit from this cross-pollination of knowledge diversity and enhanced viewpoints to not only achieve their project goals but also enhance the overall profitability of the company.
See the research, The Systemic Impact of Healthcare Staffing Shortages.
1 The research findings are based on RGP’s fall 2022 survey of 404 large companies with $1 billion or more in revenue, including 101 healthcare executives throughout North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
