As one of the largest and most integrated healthcare systems in the state of Georgia, Wellstar employs over 24,000 team members across 11 hospitals, more than 250 medical offices, 9 cancer centers, 21 imaging centers, 5 health parks, and 15 urgent care centers.
“Historically low hospital unemployment rates and a shortage of experienced healthcare professionals means we’re in uncharted territory. Therefore, building a robust passive and active talent pipeline in a competitive workforce environment is essential,” said Sonya Aldy, vice president of talent acquisition at Wellstar. “Healthcare professionals today have many options, so we must ensure we create national awareness of Wellstar as an employer of choice through targeted brand and recruitment marketing that is relevant, valuable and consistent. It is imperative that we build trust and cultivate relationships through continued connections and understanding of candidate motivations to demonstrate why Wellstar is a nationally recognized employer of choice."
Starting in 2016, Wellstar embarked on a full transformation of service delivery in candidate generation in partnership with Cielo. For a company with a strong community presence, this included updating Wellstar’s employment value proposition in conjunction with its consumer brand, building a new careers website, and investing in social media outreach. Other components included improving sourcing functionality by adding staff and strengthening the partnership with IT in order to implement new technology solutions that reach more candidates and communicate with them more efficiently.
Keeping the candidate experience front and center is essential to Wellstar’s candidate generation efforts. “We look at the candidate experience as the first part of the employee lifecycle journey,” said Aldy. “We want to ensure there’s a consistent feel to their journey as a Wellstar team member.”
A close view into the metrics helps Wellstar accomplish its goal of reaching the right candidates at the right time with the right message. Proactive sourcing with targeted messaging as well as retargeting has helped fill the talent pipeline. “The data will tell you that being on every job board is not always the best approach,” said Aldy. “Sourcing needs to be targeted and personalized.
”In healthcare, employees—and a strong pipeline of potential future employees—are central to delivering on the organization’s mission to provide world-class healthcare to every person, every time. Integrating communications through a strong EVP and a proactive sourcing strategy supported by technology has helped Wellstar increase its careers website traffic and nearly double completed applications since 2016. “The three pillars – sourcing, employer branding and technology - are table stakes in a candidate generation strategy,” said Aldy. “If you're missing one of those, you’re not going to be able to keep up in today's competitive market.”
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