RECRUITMENT


The Next Stage in Recruitment and Retention


Chris Gascoigne, a process consultant working with care provider Next Stage, talks about the role that HR technology has played in recruitment and retention within the care sector.


When it comes to naming a social care provider’s greatest asset, very few organisations would dispute that it’s their people. But in an oſten challenging sector, how can the recruitment and retention of this all-important talent be safeguarded?


Any reputable social care provider will, naturally, be focused on the level of service they deliver to their clients. At Next Stage, for instance, the goal is to offer the best possible degree of support to vulnerable young people across the North West of England, so that they can improve their independence and quality of life.


But that service delivery would not be possible without the employment of committed, experienced and hardworking individuals who live and breathe the goals of the organisation on a daily basis. Care providers therefore need to concentrate on clients and colleagues in equal amounts, which makes HR considerations a top priority.


In 2004, Next Stage started out as a team of five support workers, but fast-forward to the present day and the headcount has grown to 230 and counting, with the company recognised as an Employer of Choice.


The challenge now is to maintain the standards expected and deserved by staff and clients alike, as the organisation continues to expand. The retention of existing employees and the recruitment of further talented people lies at the heart of this.


Two years ago, the decision was made to smarten up the team’s management


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of Human Resources. There was nothing wrong with the HR approach adopted by Next Stage, but it was apparent that technology could play a greater role.


Manual, paper-based records were used to store employee details, for example, and simple procedures such as booking holidays and reporting absences were subject to lengthy, labour-intensive processes. As a result, managers had limited access to colleagues’ records, problems with holiday entitlements were commonplace, and seemingly straightforward HR tasks were incredibly time-consuming to execute. This risked restricting the efficiency of the company, not to mention access to – and the accuracy of – important management information.


Limitations did not end there. The ‘new starter’ process, for instance, was particularly arduous, with several different documents requiring completion, per person, before being scanned and stored in hard-copy files. Staff also lacked visibility of their own records, which meant daily requests were routinely sent to HR for a variety of basic queries, ranging from the changing of personal information to salary data access.


The need for a functional and intuitive new HR system was identified. It would need to be used by support workers and managers, with ease, to alleviate the administrative burden placed on the Human Resources team. That way, HR could concentrate on delivering the more value-adding activity that the profession exists to provide.


It would also need to effectively track key recruitment and retention metrics in one central area, to help proactively identify any attrition trends before they could present a problem.


Industry research brought Next Stage to CascadeGo – a cloud-based HR system rated highly for the soſtware’s core capabilities, an innovative product roadmap and the provision of ongoing support. The care industry is quite immature in terms of its experience of harnessing and utilising technology to its best advantage, so the availability of technical guidance and aſter sales care proved crucial to the decision.


Fast forward two years aſter this search and selection process, and the system is now fully embedded within both the operational and strategic running of Next Stage’s HR department. The self- service nature of the soſtware means it is widely used throughout the entire organisation too.


Managers now have constant secure access to a 3600 view of their staff, with all relevant documentation for every single employee conveniently stored and maintained. A raſt of department- level reporting is also only one click away, which promotes more proactive


www.tomorrowscare.co.uk


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