The Challenge

UHBW were required to quickly fill over 100 new vacancies across their 10 sites to meet the demands created by the COVID-19 pandemic. These roles spanned across nursing, cleaning and catering.

The Trust’s usual hiring process consisted of monthly face-to-face interviews and assessment centers involving up to 40 candidates. These processes had been rolled out across numerous staff groups within the Trust so it was considered a robust and reliable structure. However, with social distancing measures suddenly put in place UHBW had to adapt and evolve. With 300 candidates already lined up for assessment, the Trust’s first adaptation involved telephone interviews with every candidate, but this soon proved time-consuming and laborious, requiring the recruiters to administer up to 15 telephone interviews a day. As a result, both parties were unable to show their best selves, which affected the efficiency and effectiveness of the operation.

Meanwhile, roles in nursing, catering and cleaning, especially those in the ‘flexible’ workforce, had been notoriously difficult to recruit for, with language barriers and other life commitments commonly cited as challenging factors.

As a CQC-rated ‘Outstanding’ Trust, UHBW are digital leaders in the space. It became apparent that true transformation was necessary to keep recruitment strategies relevant and reactive. The Trust needed new tools to continue to assess accurately and fairly, but also efficiently, in their new working environment.

After just 1 week, UHBW started to reap the benefits of moving their recruitment process to the virtual world, particularly in resource savings. Live assessment centers, which typically required up to three hours for six people, have now been reduced with video interviewing to just 1.5 hours for one person.

After initial set up, candidates are automatically invited to take part in the video interview. Without further intervention from the UHBW team, the candidates completed their video assessments, and the assessors have been able to make an unprecedented 12 offers in just one afternoon. Across three weeks, over 60 individuals completed the interviews, which resulted in 30 offers.

The Trust has reported a 66% reduction in time it takes to make a decision on every candidate, leading to further benefits of a higher job acceptance rate. Meanwhile, candidates describe the experience easy-to-use and highly engaging.

As the Trust continues to process the applications received for these emergency vacancies with their new solution, UHBW are also reassessing how best to approach all recruitment processes on a longer-term basis to roll out across different staff groups.