Find out the best practices for corporate alumni for healthcare and the top benefits. Learn how EnterpriseAlumni keeps you connected to former employees.
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The healthcare industry employs over 22 million people in the US alone and is one of the fastest-growing sectors. As a result, healthcare companies need to develop positive, trustworthy reputations to hire and retain top talent.
That’s where corporate alumni programs shine. Solutions like EnterpriseAlumni for Healthcare help organizations keep their former employees engaged and current employees invested, simplify boomerang hires, and streamline talent acquisition.
EnterpriseAlumni delivers real-time analytics, customized interfaces, and multiple integrations to help grow these networks.
Here we explore some of the best practices for corporate healthcare alumni networks - and why companies need them. 
There are three standout reasons as to why healthcare businesses should create an alumni network:
Let’s explore these benefits in more detail.
An alumni network for healthcare professionals is a fantastic way for organizations to promote their branding.
When employees stop working with a company, their relationship with that business typically ends.
However, developing an alumni network proves that your top-performing employees are still valuable to your organization, even after they've left. As a result, past employees will be more motivated to support your business, advocate for your branding, and promote your values.
For instance, with platforms like Glassdoor, employees can review your company and highlight why it's a fantastic work environment for top-tier professionals. Building a positive reputation through employee reviews is much easier, making businesses in the healthcare industry much more attractive to high-quality talent.
Over 80% of healthcare leaders say talent acquisition and retention are risks to healthcare organizations. These factors have spiked medical costs by 7%, and as a result, industry leaders are employing various solutions to overcome the challenges of talent acquisition:
Part of the reason is the specialist nature of the work, and the fact it requires specially trained workers with particular skillsets. A more straightforward solution is developing an alumni network. These communities are a pre-qualified pool of candidates already familiar with your business's culture, values, and process.
This is a significant advantage for businesses. It greatly accelerates operational efficiency, reducing onboarding time by several months and getting employees working as soon as possible.
Mentorship and knowledge sharing enable organizations to help their best employees advance their skills, making them better quality hires for your company. Establishing an alumni network makes this possible. Organizations can offer previous employees mentorship, helping them upskill their expertise and develop a long-lasting relationship with your business.
Professionals are more likely to stay invested in your organization through mentorship and knowledge-sharing opportunities because they can directly gain value to progress their careers. This makes building a thriving healthcare alumni community easier and motivates previous employees to re-join your company, providing more expertise than they had.
Building an alumni network involves finding a dedicated platform, personalizing communications, and promoting knowledge sharing, among other practices.
Here are the top strategies for establishing healthcare alumni networks.
A dedicated platform for your healthcare alumni network is critical. These platforms centralize all your strategies and communications to grow your network and build a community-oriented environment. The right platform is one of the critical building blocks of a successful corporate alumni network.
With a solution like EnterpriseAlumni, healthcare institutions can leverage various features for a thriving alumni program, including:
These functions allow organizations to establish an alumni platform facilitating knowledge sharing, collaboration, and re-employment opportunities.
After selecting the right platform for your alumni program, another best practice for a successful corporate alumni network is hosting regular events. This is imperative to maintaining positive relationships with former employees. Healthcare organizations can host an annual conference, workshops to help alumni leverage professional development, social gatherings for networking opportunities, and industry webinars.
These events strengthen alumni ties and motivate them to join and interact with other former employees in your network. Healthcare alumni must find a purpose in joining your network, and hosting regular events is the perfect solution.
This approach allows organizations to promote branding and incentivize former employees to share your events with their own professional networks. In other words, it creates another avenue for acquiring high-quality talent without the cost and resources associated with traditional recruitment.
Exit interviews are crucial to understanding employee departures. Organizations must use them to depart with employees on the best terms and gain insights about why these professionals leave their businesses.
For example, are employees ending their contracts because there aren't enough professional development opportunities? Do they believe there is no healthy work-life balance, or perhaps they need a higher-paying job?
The HR department plays a pivotal role in how you design and refine your alumni engagement strategies because they can get answers to these questions. Gathering this information allows you to understand how to re-engage former employees in your organization and offer them more value to retain them.
Another advantage of exit interviews is that they allow HR to identify potential boomerang hires. HR reps must highlight these candidates so healthcare businesses can invite these employees to their corporate alumni networks.
Personalized communication is essential for engaging your healthcare alumni. Your business must value the professionals in your network; personalizing your communication is the best way to achieve this. Segment professionals based on roles, expertise, and interests and send targeted communication to these segments.
For example, if you're hosting a workshop on women's health, it's best to market this event to alumni who would be most engaged and interested in this workshop. This strategy shows your alumni that you understand their goals and what appeals to them.
Another tactic for personalizing alumni communications is recognizing the achievements of professionals in your network and congratulating them on this. If a former employee has furthered their education or won an award in a specific field, send them a message to acknowledge and support them. It shows previous employees that your business is invested in them and wants to see them succeed.
Everybody loves exclusive benefits and perks, and your alumni is no different. These benefits are a fantastic way to keep them involved in your program and motivate more former employees to join your network. You can offer professionals continued education programs and healthcare service discounts, which are valuable advantages for healthcare employees.
A significant benefit of EnterpriseAlumni is that we make it easy for healthcare organizations to offer exclusive benefits and perks through a dedicated marketplace. Businesses can customize this marketplace to their branding and establish unique benefits and perks to engage alumni.
Knowledge sharing within alumni networks helps professionals stay ahead of industry trends, expand their skill sets, and stay updated with networking opportunities. Healthcare employees are always looking for more channels to gain valuable knowledge they can use to boost their careers, and they can gain these insights from fellow alumni in your program.
Mentorship programs are another effective way to keep former employees active in your network. These programs will benefit both mentors and mentees in the healthcare sector. Mentors can discover opportunities to advance their experience, and mentees can connect with the right mentors to help them develop the skills they need to progress in their fields.
Establishing formal mentorship programs through your alumni network is another way to foster relationships and professional growth. Ultimately, potential candidates will have another reason to join your network.
Data analytics is critical for understanding and enhancing engagement because it gives healthcare businesses complete visibility into what drives their alumni network. EnterpriseAlumni delivers real-time, actionable insights to help companies make informed decisions on engaging and growing their alumni networks.
Instead of running your alumni program on guesswork, you can leverage valuable data on how candidates interact within your network. Organizations can use automation tools to produce custom reports and export data to share with key decision-makers.
This data reveals how your program performs against other alumni networks and metrics, such as:
These analytics can help healthcare institutions refine their engagement strategies and find the most effective tactics.
A boomerang employee is a professional who has left an organization and later gets rehired and returns working for that business. Boomerang employees are your most valuable human resource and are critical to healthcare organizations. These professionals are already familiar with the company's culture, allowing them to re-integrate quickly with minimal training and bottlenecks.
A well-managed alumni network facilitates a smooth re-entry for boomerang employees. These programs keep professionals invested in healthcare businesses, motivating them to return to working for a company.
Overall, this approach significantly positively impacts productivity and morale within an organization because companies don't have to invest time, money, and resources in recruiting, onboarding, and training new staff. Your alumni network can drive revenue by keeping your former employees involved in your business and eliminating the expenses associated with traditional recruitment.
However, to leverage these advantages, healthcare companies must develop a solid strategy for successfully rehiring boomerang employees. 
Developing a network of corporate alumni for healthcare companies allows businesses to enhance their branding, streamline talent acquisition, and effortlessly re-integrate boomerang employees.
Healthcare companies can design, create, grow, and market successful alumni networks with EnterpriseAlumni. In one platform, they can leverage all the features they need to accelerate rehires and keep former employees invested in their companies.
We have a track record of helping our customers develop successful alumni networks. Follow our blog for the latest tools and resources on corporate healthcare alumni programs.
