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Cost-Benefit Analysis
Walden University
MHRM – 6401 Human Resource Analytics
Dr. Amy Puderbaugh
July 25, 2021
Cost-Benefit Analysis
St. Vincent’s Hospital Case Breakdown
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St. Mary’s is a 400-bed hospital and is the third-largest facility in the Northwest. The
organization has never experienced an employee layoff since its inception. CEO Rober Barry
hired Sharon Osgood as director of human resources (HR). In 2002, the occupancy of the
hospital fell to 57 percent. This situation was the start of problems for the hospital. The declining
occupancy rates affected the hospital’s revenue and caused a significant deficit. To generate
savings, the board of directors recommended that CEO lay off 10 percent of its nonessential
employees. Mr. Osgood was presented with creating a $3 million short-term savings plan
through layoffs and a long-term plan to prevent future layoffs. Furthermore, she knew this
process would be costly for the organization.
The human resources (HR) department has been experiencing difficulty finding qualified
nurses in the past three years. Additionally, the director of nursing is experiencing burnout
because she has been conducting all off-site recruitment and internal candidate evaluations. The
case study analysis using cost-benefit metrics shows that the organization’s current recruitment
process is ineffective. There are too many recruiting sources and different results generated by
the yield ratios and costs per hire metrics. HR can improve this situation by eliminating
inadequate recruitment sources, adopting talent analytics, and implementing additional metrics.
Hospital Recruiting Strategy Metrics
There has been a massive change in the HR recruiting strategy over the past few decades.
The HR department is currently transitioning from dealing with only administrative issues,
compensation, and litigation to driving corporate strategy and creating value. Therefore, HR
professionals should possess a strategic mindset and knowledge of critical financial information,
including metrics, to have greater clarity and focus in decision-making (Albrecht et al., 2016).
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Moreover, healthcare HR departments have a crucial responsibility of employing the best
healthcare practitioners to deliver quality health services to their patients and communities.
There is a higher demand for talent in the modern healthcare environment and a low
supply of eligible applicants. HR managers use metrics to measure the efficiency and
effectiveness of the recruitment processes. Some hiring metrics can be expressed as ratios, such
as yield ratios. However, other metrics are defined as absolute values, such as time to fill, source
of hire, quality of employment, and cost per hire.
The Importance of Recruiting Metrics
Hiring metrics are significant in the development and implementation of recruiting
strategies. Tracking recruitment metrics is essential in measuring the success of the hiring
process, ranging from the average time taken to fill vacant positions to the level of the applicants’
