Choice Support - Campaign Recruitment
Transforming in-house social care recruitment for a provider of support to people with Learning Disabilities.
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
- 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 the Pre-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.
Cohesion’s Relationship with Choice Support
We caught up with Choice Support’s HR team, to get their take on the services Choice Support has received from Cohesion:
“Choice Support have been working with Cohesion for over 6 months and we have been very satisfied with both the results achieved and the level of service provided.
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.
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.
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.”
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Recruitment & Retention: Revolutionary Practice for the Future Social Care Workforce JAN 2025
Recruitment & Retention: Revolutionary Practice for the Future Social Care Workforce
Recruitment & Retention: Revolutionary Practice for the Future Social Care Workforce
Cohesion are an extension of us and really live our values. They never fail to deliver on promise and work hard to deliver a high quality candidate experience and service to us. We have complete faith that with Cohesion’s unique expertise they will continue to help build a strong talent pipeline for our Nursing Service.
Today, we have a healthy recruitment pipeline in most locations, our vacant hours are drastically reduced which has a huge impact on agency costs and quality of care. The average time to offer has reduced considerably and more encouraging is the quality of our new colleagues who are recruited for their ‘values’
I would definitely recommend Cohesion as a recruitment partner. Working with them has taken the pain out of the recruitment process.
Cohesion’s 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 achieve a high attendance rate at interview and very low drop out post interview. I have been impressed with how responsive they have been to any issues raised and their ability to deliver candidates in a difficult recruitment market