North Bristol NHS Trust
Providing a solution supporting with Nurse and Domestic recruitment.
Overview
North Bristol NHS Trust is the centre of excellence for health care in the South West in a number of fields, as well as one of the largest hospital trusts in the UK.
They have over 8,000 staff delivering healthcare across Southmead Hospital Bristol, Cossham Hospital, Bristol Centre for Enablement and within the local community of Bristol and South Gloucestershire.
Their aim is to provide patients with best practice, high quality care and treatment that is comparable to the best in the world.
The Solution
North Bristol NHS Trust approached Cohesion to assist initially with a specialist high volume recruitment project of Healthcare Assistants.
The Trust were looking to recruit 150 Healthcare Assistants (HCA’s) in order to meet additional resource needs required as a result of preparing for winter pressures and peak demand within the hospital.
Since the partnership began, we have recruited beyond the initial intake requirements, and have extended the solution to support with Nurse and Domestic recruitment. Specifically, we have:
- Implemented a values based screening and assessment process.
- Ensured high volumes of applications are processed quickly, holding weekly assessment centres of 20+ candidates per week where required.
- Taken provision of the screening process, to ensure only the very best candidates get booked for assessment and interviews, improving conversions from interview to offer as a result.
- Managed the compliance process, to ensure pre-employment checks such as references and DBS checks are complete efficiently, ensuring candidate engagement continues throughout, to ensure minimum withdrawals.
- Implemented a retention survey solution to enable us to speak to new starters at given time periods to act as an alleviant for early concerns.
Results
- 528 offers made since going live, made up of 343 Healthcare Assistants, 129 Qualified Nurses and 82 Domestic Assistants.
- An interview/assessment centre attendance rate of 83% for HCA’s and 93% for Nurses.
- 84% of HCA’s and 93% of Nurses have been offered a position from interview/assessment centre.
Cohesion’s Relationship with NBT
We recently caught up with Jacolyn Fergusson, Director of People and Transformation at North Bristol NHS Trust to gain their thoughts on Cohesion, and the service received:
“North Bristol NHS Trust have been working with Cohesion for over 18 months and we have been very satisfied with both the results achieved and the level of service provided. Like any partnership we both work had at making the most out of our relationship and hope that we are seen as one by both organisations. Cohesion were initially appointed to assist us with a specialist high volume recruitment project of HCA’s where we needed a large number of new people recruited over a short period of time. We have subsequently extended the service to include Nurses and Domestic Operatives.
Cohesion were very quickly able to understand our requirements to develop screening criteria to manage candidates from application through telephone interview and attendance at assessment centres. In addition they have supported us with pre-employment checks to ensure candidates are kept engaged throughout the on boarding process and are able to start as quickly as possible. Cohesion provided a professional partnership to us which enabled NBT to move much more quickly than we could have done by ourselves and provided a personal approach to our applicants.”