A Collaborative Effort to Build a Nursing Assistant Pipeline

The Older Adult Services (also known as long-term care) collaborative launched in late 2019 as a pilot initiative for the metro area of nine employers.  Utilizing the TPM process, the collaborative shared a goal of closing the skills gap and talent misalignment, strengthening the talent supply and employer process, and driving improved retention.  The OAS collaborative chose the Certified Nursing Assistant job as their critical pain point.

An Eye-Opening Forecast 

Leveraging the data tools TPM offers, the OAS employers engaged in a demand planning process and projected a need for just under 5,400 nursing assistants within the next two years for the Twin Cities metro alone (427 new positions and 4,971 replacement positions).  Having made these projections pre-pandemic, we believe these numbers are even higher today.

Alignment and Communication of Job Requirements

Mitigating critical skills shortages requires a focus on quality, which means addressing the competency, credential, and other hiring requirements for critical jobs.  The collaborative came to a consensus on:

• Education Requirements     
• Credentials     
• Experience Levels     
• Competencies     
• Employability Skills     
• Other Hiring Requirements

A Collection of Supply Data

After concentrating on how to focus and communicate demand, the OAS collaborative began an in-depth analysis of current and potential talent supply.  The collaborative addressed these critical questions:

• Where have we traditionally found talent for new hires?  For upskilling opportunities?
• Do we have the necessary supply of talent internally or from external providers to meet our projected demand?
• What is the current and potential capacity of our internal and external pipelines to meet our workforce needs now and into the future?
• What are other potential sources of talent – both internal and external – that can help us meet our workforce needs, including increasing diversity?
• What are the size and characteristics of the overall talent pool within our geographic area, including those populations that could be prioritized for DEI initiatives?

After agreeing upon a definition of a successful hire, the collaborative engaged in a talent flow analysis, collecting data on 980 hires from the previous years, using this information to identify how effective they are at sourcing talent from education institutions, feeder jobs, and current providers.  This, combined with the demand planning data, led to a supply-demand analysis which only confirmed the dire need to address the talent pipeline for nursing assistants.

Co-designing New Solutions

The Older Adult Services collaborative has now identified key talent partners to engage in a co-design of talent pipeline outcomes, define performance and success measures, and establish an action plan to execute.  Together, these partners have identified pain points in training and education, employer return on investment measures, talent partner metrics, and potential commitments to performance-incentive processes.

Below are the talent partners identified by the group alongside the original nine employer members of the Older Adult Services collaborative.