Overview
Choice Support is an innovative, national Social Care charity, providing support to people with Learning Disabilities. Choice Support employ in excess of 1600 staff that are responsible for the care and support of over 900 people across England.
Approach
A number of years ago, recruitment was decentralised, and responsibility was passed on to individual Service Managers. As a result:
- Recruitment processes tend to vary between services;
- Attrition has, historically, been low at 10%, but is becoming more of an issue;
- There are no set attraction strategies
- A large number of candidates drop out of the process. In one instance- not one shortlisted candidate turned up to a planned recruitment centre;
- Anecdotally, it takes 2-3 months to fill a vacant position and;
- As a last resort- agency staff are used. However, the significant use of agency staff came at an additional cost.
Choice Support approached Cohesion in Q1 of 2017, to explore the opportunity to improve recruitment outcomes in some of Choice Support’s more problematic services.
Cohesion took full accountability for recruitment to the ‘in-scope’ areas, and provided a detailed outline of ‘what success looks like’. To achieve Choice Support’s desired recruitment outcomes, Cohesion implemented a solution which included:
- A values-based screening and assessment process;
- Reinvigorating previous recruitment marketing materials and collateral, to more appropriately showcase and represent the Choice Support brand;
- An attraction and sourcing strategy, which itself incorporated both online channels and proactive candidate sourcing;
- Management of the end-to-end candidate journey, including the Pre-Employment process with references and DBS checks, and;
- The development of a talent pool of candidates who may be suitable for future vacancies, solely for the exclusive use of Choice Support.
Results
The results to date have been impressive:
- In excess of 80 offers made across a 6-month pilot campaign;
- Over 80% of candidates that attended interviews were suitable for offer;
- From those that were offered roles – a 90% offer acceptance rate was achieved;
- During thePre-Employment process, we were able to retain 85% of those who had been offered roles;
- 92% of the candidates we recruited for Choice Support are still with them today.
- A variety of different positions have been filled for Choice Support, including front-line workers through to Care Home Managers, in both critical and hard-to-fill areas.
- Following the trial, Choice Support have extended the engagement with Cohesion to include all recruitment within the organisation.
Cohesion’s Relationship with Choice Support
Proven Success in Hard-to-Recruit Areas
Cohesion were initially appointed on a trial basis and were allocated our “hard to recruit” areas. In a short time they were able to deliver a steady stream of good quality candidates.
Efficient Process & High Candidate Engagement
They took candidates through to telephone interview and organised face to face interviews with our managers and then rapidly progressed Pre-Employment checks, and handed over candidates ready to start work. The results were very impressive. The effort that Cohesion make to keep candidates engaged and move them efficiently through the recruitment process was key to helping us to achieve a high attendance rate at interview and very low drop out post interview.
Responsive Partnership & Extended Collaboration
I have worked closely with Cohesion throughout the trial and have been impressed with how responsive they have been to any issues raised and their ability to deliver candidates in a difficult recruitment market and as a result we have now extended their work to all our services.”
