Reimagined talent strategy delivers competitive edge for healthcare system

Challenges

A large regional healthcare system was on its way to realizing its market leadership potential – but it still needed an edge. Knowing quality talent is key and after assessing its hiring practices, HR leadership decided to transform its approach to talent acquisition.

The goals were lofty:

• Make the healthcare system the market leader
• Achieve a Best Places to Work ranking
• Increase patient satisfaction
• Create an ideal candidate experience

The organization recognized the advantage of partnering with a Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) provider to achieve these bold ambitions. So, it chose a bold partner – Cielo – to create a best-in-class talent acquisition function.

Solutions

Working closely, the organization and Cielo established processes that leveraged best practices from within and outside of the healthcare industry.

An initial focus for the program was to raise the perception of the HR team internally, positioning members as strategic consultants focused on retention, engagement, leadership development and other strategic HR objectives. That left recruitment and related activities to Cielo dedicated recruitment experts.

The team has leveraged numerous tactics to propel the health system ahead of the competition:

• Innovative recruitment marketing plans for building candidate pipelines
• Elevation of candidate experience for both external and internal applicants
• New technologies to improve efficiency, consistency and communication
• Consistent, organization-wide metrics for better decision-making
• Enhanced processes for improved compliance
• Focus on continuous improvement and shared learning

Since the partnership began, the team has been responsible for: meeting the start-up hiring requirements for a newly launched healthcare facility, a considerable surge in hiring demands when a new neuroscience area opened and the new hospital became a destination facility, a program expansion to hire for leadership positions, and other incremental enhancements.

Results

The original goal of the partnership, which began in 2008, was to use talent acquisition as a competitive advantage along its journey to market leadership. Nearly five years later, the partnership has matured to achieve this and much more for the healthcare system, including:

• Consecutive rankings on the region's Best Places to Work list
• Increased patient and physician satisfaction scores year over year
• Recognition that it’s an invaluable member of the community

For the healthcare system, the path to Best Places to Work started with the candidate, flowed through new-hire satisfaction and ended with right-fit, engaged employees. These numbers speak for themselves:

• Decreased cost per hire by 66%
• Increased retention by 5 percentage points to 97%
• Boosted hiring manager satisfaction to 95% – up more than 20 percentage points
• Increased candidate satisfaction to 95% – up 17 percentage points
• Lengthened tenure of recruitment team members to 3 years