How Anglicare SA slash costs and accelerate hiring

Challenge

Prior to implementing LiveHire’s Applicant Tracking System, the recruitment function at Anglicare was decentralised. This model meant that each of the hiring managers were responsible for all aspects of their own recruitment including working with agencies to source and screen candidates. This was time consuming and took them away from their core duties; it also meant that quality candidates couldn’t be shared across the various business units.

Recruiters underutilised

Their small recruitment team was managing compliance and posting job ads, when needed. They weren’t actively involved in interviewing or selecting candidates. This was a missed opportunity for the business as they were not harnessing the recruitment team’s specialist skills.

Hiring managers were engaging with agencies directly and the TA team had no visibility of costs or the organisation’s
candidate pool. When Pia Algate, Senior Manager, Resourcing & Talent joined Anglicare in 2019, the organisation realised a
centralised function was needed.

The idea was that the internal recruitment team would manage the end-to-end recruitment process and provide expert assistance. Anglicare knew that by centralising the function and getting the recruitment team involved during all stages of the recruitment process, they would reduce time-to-hire, improve candidate quality and slash costs. To achieve their goals, Anglicare quickly realised they would need a new Applicant Tracking System (ATS).

“The feedback we received from hiring managers was that the current Applicant Tracking System was outdated and failed to provide a positive experience for candidates. Moving forward, we knew that if our team would be the main users we needed a modern ATS that was going to be efficient and add more value to our function,” said Ms Algate. Pia and the team went out to the market to find a new Applicant Tracking System.

Anglicare were also keen to build a Talent Community and were impressed by the functionality that the LiveHire platform delivers.

The Solution

Anglicare adopted the full LiveHire end-to-end solution that incorporates both Candidate Relationship Management and Applicant Tracking System functionality. “The exceptional support we received from LiveHire made the transition seamless. They were with us every step of the way ensuring the platform was set up to meet our needs,” said Ms Algate.

It didn’t take long for the hiring managers to embrace the new centralised approach thanks to the change management strategy Anglicare adopted.

Talent Community
During their implementation of LiveHire, Anglicare created a private Talent Community, where candidates interested in working for the organisation could register their interest and join the community. Previous applicants were also invited to join the Talent Community and they soon began to receive regular communication from Anglicare.

This strategy allowed Anglicare to build a pipeline of qualified candidates that are pre-screened and ready for current and future vacancies.

Results

LiveHire enabled a streamlined recruitment process which delivered impressive results, including a reduced time-to-hire. When they initially implemented LiveHire in 2020 their days to hire was around 55 and they were getting 73 applications per hire. Only 31% of roles were filled on time.

Since implementation, Anglicare worked closely with their LiveHire Account Manager and the support team to improve their results. The hard work paid off and in the last year, 67% of their hires came from the Talent Community vs 11% from job boards and time-to-hire was only 22 days, which is twice as fast as hires from job boards.

“The savings from our reduced reliance on job boards is remarkable, and when we factor in the money saved on agency fees, LiveHire has proven to be a solid investment.”

Addressing Hard to Fill Roles
In the competitive talent landscape of aged care, finding and retaining quality staff is essential for delivering high-quality services. Aged care providers face unique challenges and filling nursing and carer roles are some of the most difficult.

To address these challenges, Anglicare built a Talent Community and leveraged LiveHire’s unique Talent Pooling functionality to help them to create and nurture a pipeline of qualified candidates. They have achieved remarkable results with their work in this area. Already their Talent Community has around 9,000 nurses, which is around 30% of the total number of nurses in South Australia.

Increased Candidate Engagement
Hiring efficiency and speed is critical when Anglicare is competing for top talent. The two-way SMS feature works well for the team, enabling them to quickly engage with candidates on-the-go. “We’re not waiting around for somebody to check their email, which they may not do until the end of the day. Everyone’s got their phone on them, and the responses to SMS are quick which cuts down delays.”

“Building Talent Pools has been hugely successful for Anglicare. The time-to-hire from the Talent Community is twice as fast and candidates respond to SMS messages in just 13 minutes,” said Ms Algate.

Brand Segments
Believe Housing Australia is one of the organisations in the Anglicare portfolio, and using brand segments they are able to customise their branding and publish open roles to the Believe Housing Australia Website. Anglicare also utilise Brand Segments to recruit their volunteers. Understandably, the application process for volunteers is different to permanent employees. To maximise the number of applications from volunteers, it’s important to customise the application process and make it more user friendly and only capture the information that is needed.

“We didn’t want the volunteer cohort to be put off by a lengthy process, so we implemented LiveHire’s Brand Segments tool which allows us to set up each of the Anglicare SA brands individually,” said Ms Algate. Integrating the tech stack To further streamline the Recruitment process Anglicare integrated LiveHire with their HRIS, which has eliminated manual keying of data and ensures new starter information is accurate from day one. They are now just finalising an integration with Criteria and plan to also integrate with their reference check platform.

“We love that LiveHire is so integration friendly. Their open API gives us access to an impressive marketplace of tools that are tightly integrated and streamline our recruitment processes.”

Metrics Drive Continuous Improvement
Anglicare is harnessing the power of the reporting and metrics that come with LiveHire. “The analytics have been instrumental for us in showing the value of the centralised model, we can see how much more efficient we are at filling vacancies,” said Ms Algate.

A wealth of data is available, particularly around advertising spend. “There is a general expectation that to fill a job vacancy, a certain job board should be used. Often the data demonstrates that the job board in question, isn’t the best source of candidates, so we are able to show the data and explain historically which sources have produced the best candidates.”

Summary

Anglicare has moved their recruitment function from decentralised to a centralised model with impressive results. By
reducing reliance on traditional recruitment methods and optimising their hiring process, Anglicare has liberated hiring
managers and provided them more time to carry out their core role while slashing the costs associated with recruitment
advertising, agency fees, and time spent on manual tasks.

“The LiveHire team were focused on building a partnership with us from day one and we are thrilled with the results we
have achieved. It’s a very user-friendly platform and LiveHire has been fantastic,” said Ms Algate.

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