Grace Healthcare Lowers Turnover and Increases Compliance by Using Vikus New Hire Management

Transcription

1 Grace Healthcare Lowers Turnover and Increases Compliance by Using Vikus New Hire Management Company Background Grace Healthcare is a privately owned healthcare organization that owns and manages skilled nursing, assisted living, and rehabilitation facilities across the United States. They manage 47 facilities in 11 states and emply over 4,000 people.

2 Business Challenges Grace Healthcare encountered hiring challenges inherent to an organization of their size and scope. While each individual facility hired for their own staff, it was important for Grace Corporate to provide tools for the hiring process to ensure consistency and compliance. They realized that the use of technology was the only way to achieve the results they needed. Given that staffing costs account for over 50% of their total nursing home operating expenses, an investment in technology for their hiring process made fiscal sense. Grace Healthcare desired a solution that would address the following needs: Increase the flow of qualified applicants. Provide an automatic way to objectively evaluate each applicant so that the hiring manager spends their valuable time on the right candidates. Identify and ensure that appropriate due-process would be completed on all new hires. Finally, Grace needed a better, more efficient way to complete and manage all their new hire paperwork. Since nursing homes are subject to strict government scrutiny and on-site inspections without notice, having quick easy access to all employee forms can save one facility literally thousands of dollars in government fines. Challenges Industry highly regulated by the government. Multiple facilities across the country in need of a systematic approach for hiring. Staff turnover rates near 50%. Why Vikus? Designed and configured for Senior Care Providers. Simple and easy to understand user interface. Assessments embedded in the software provide a way to objectively rank applicants. A consistent and repeatable system across multiple locations.

3 Grace Deploys Vikus Beginning in May 2010, Grace Healthcare implemented Vikus New Hire Management. The implementation process was completed and rolled out to their 47 facilities in 90 days. Vikus provided Grace with a branded hiring platform. This allowed Grace to access many more potential applicants they never had access to before, dramatically increasing both the size and quality of their applicant pool. Potential applicants would create accounts and fill out applications which were submitted and reviewed electronically. Job postings were created by facility hiring managers based on vacancies or new position needs. Applications could be collected for positions not currently open if desired, keeping the pipeline full for positions with the highest turnover. Applicant administration was also handled online. Grace issued user accounts for all hiring managers in the organization, at both the facility and corporate levels. Account permissions were customized ensuring users accessing the system would view and administer only applicants in their department. Vikus has revolutionized our entire HR function by providing a platform for hiring that connects all our facilities and allows them to make independent hiring decisions. We have reduced new hire turnover every year since we implemented in Tracy Surdyk, Director of Human Resources, Grace Healthcare Once jobs were posted and applications received, the hiring manager viewed a ranked list of candidates based on their results on two objective assessments. Each job had a specific checklist designed to help the hiring manager properly complete the review process. Job specific interview guides provided through Vikus helped hiring managers know what questions they should ask; ultimately ensuring they make the best hiring decision. Once hired, new employees completed all onboarding forms online. These forms were electronically signed by the employee prior to the first day of employment and stored for future access.

4 Grace Sees Reduction in Turnover and Increased Compliance One of the best objective measures of the hiring process is to review New Hire Turnover (turnover which happens in the first 90 days). New Hire Turnover is the most costly to any organization and is the part of turnover that is most closely associated with the hiring decision. It is typically said that if an employee turns over in the first 90 days, we simply made a bad hire. Using data compiled over a 3-year period, Grace s New Hire Turnover was calculated and compared against their pre-vikus performance. Before implementation, Grace s New Hire Turnover for 2009 was 45% (55% retention). While still lower than the industry average, there was still room for a great deal of improvement. And considering the average cost of replacing a CNA is estimated as $2,000 and an RN as around $7,000, even a small reduction in turnover would have a significant impact on the bottom line. Key Results New Hire Turnover reduced from 45% to 28% in 2 years. Turnover related costs reduced over $1,000,000 per year. Increased efficiency with new hire paperwork saved an average of 45 minutes per hire. More applicants for each position reduced time-to-hire and allowed for increased selectivity. The results were staggering. Grace s New Hire Turnover for 2010 was 36% (which is a 20% reduction). Grace s New Hire Turnover for 2011 was 28% (which is a 38% reduction). Grace s New Hire Turnover for 2012 remained 28%.

5 With the help of assessments, job specific interview guides, and hiring checklists, Grace Healthcare was able to achieve this meaningful and significant turnover improvement. This 38% reduction saved Grace an estimated $1,158,000 (assuming the cost of 1 New Hire termination to be $2,000). Each candidate had an initial checklist associated with their job specific application. Hiring managers complete the checklist to ensure they do not miss any steps required in reviewing a potential candidate. For hired employees where the checklist was above 90% complete, the retention rate was 68%. This was 19% above the company average. Overall, when looking at candidates where all three superior selection criterions were met, the retention rate was 79%. Clearly, when hiring managers took full advantage of the Vikus Hiring Platform, the results were impressive. And given the high costs of turnover and the fixed nature of a majority of nursing home revenue (Medicare), this improvement had a direct, positive impact on Grace s bottom line. We have found Vikus to be a very useful tool in our human resources processes. Vikus allows the user to easily navigate and have one stop from posting open positions to hiring to onboarding new employees. it has made the management of our process much easier and much more consistent. - George Brewer, Facility Administrator, Grace Healthcare