Trends in Talent Incentives at Social Medical Service Institutions

Trends in Talent Incentives at Social Medical Service Institutions focuses on "long-term incentive trends in the listed medical service industry" and "comprehensive incentives for top talent in social medical service institutions". It elaborates on current practices in talent incentives in China's medical service industry and suggests a framework for the implementation of talent strategies.

Viewpoints and key findings

In recent years, demand for medical services in China has continued to expand, and national medical resource investment has maintained a rapid growth rate. Meanwhile, increases in people's income have laid a solid foundation for the release of demand for healthcare insurance. With the effective control of the epidemic, the medical services market is gradually returning to thrive, but the issue of talent will remain an important factor restricting its development.

Trends and talent challenges in China's medical service industry:

• The industry transformation has been accelerated due to the epidemic situation. The pain point of talent management keeps restricting the development of the industry.
• The industry is lack of professional, market-oriented and international professionals. It will be even more difficult to attract talents.
• The mechanism of attracting, using and retaining core talents needs to be further improved.

Trends in long-term incentives at listed medical service institutions:

• The popularity of equity incentive: by the end of 2020 Q2, one third of the listed medical service institutions have announced the equity incentive plan, including half of the A-share listed companies and HK listed companies.
• Key elements of equity incentive plan: equity instruments are most widely used; most of the announced incentive plan is below 3% of the total equity; more than 80% of the equity incentive plans have no locking period or the lock-in period within 1 year (inclusive); operating income and net profit are the most used indicators for company performance conditions.

The comprehensive incentive framework for core talents in medical institutions needs to take into account the interests of shareholders, medical institutions and core talents at the same time:

• For shareholders: return on human capital investment
• For medical institutions: the utilization efficiency of human resources and incentive resources
• For top talent: the comprehensive incentive mechanism of internal equity and external competitiveness; talent demands and the extent to which these are matched

As public medical institutions gradually resume expansion in the aftermath of the epidemic, the talent issues faced by social medical service institutions will become more severe. Social medical service institutions need to focus on meeting the demands of top talent in the industry, and simultaneously consider the overall situation from the perspective of shareholders and medical institutions, using a combination of medium-and-long-term incentive tools, innovative welfare programs and other customized models to attract, retain and motivate talent.

In addition, advanced technologies such as digitization, big data, and artificial intelligence have brought disruptive changes to the industry. Medical service institutions need to identify the potential application scenarios for emerging medical technology, fully foresee the dynamic trends in future medical services and product delivery models, and plan the layout of talent selection, training and comprehensive incentive mechanisms in advance.