Home Health Foundation relies on Position Manager for efficient recruiting and a positive applicant experience

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Recruiting a workforce in home health presents unique and complex challenges. Home health providers, perhaps more than any other type of organization, are faced with finding needles in haystacks - finding competent, caring employees who can handle the demands of the job and don’t break the budget. To manage this challenge, more and more home health organizations are turning to HealthcareSource^®, the leader in talent management for healthcare.

One success story is Home Health Foundation, a not-for-profit organization, founded in 1895, which provides a full continuum of home care services through its three sister agencies: Home Health VNA, Merrimack Valley Hospice, and HomeCare, Inc. The recruiting team manages the hiring across all three agencies, so an organized hiring process is critical. These agencies have relied on Position Manager^® as its applicant tracking system since 2001. They have achieved more efficient and organized recruiting and have created a positive applicant experience, “I don’t know how we would function without it,” explained Rachel Deandrea, the lead recruiter.

Efficient and organized recruiting

One key benefit for the recruiting team at Home Health Foundation is the transparency Position Manager enables. The automated requisition module has been instrumental in creating that transparency for the Home Health Foundation recruiting team. “If a job requisition gets held up in the approval process, it is easy for me to identify who has the requisition and remind them to take action,” said Rachel. “Retaining the notes in the system also lets everyone involved in the hiring decision know what is going on. Previously, when someone scribbled notes on a requisition, those notes were not visible.”

Before Home Health Foundation implemented automated requisitions, they managed requisitions on paper. “My boss would ask to see the trail of signatures on a requisition and I would have to find one sheet out of hundreds,” explained Rachel. “Now I don’t have to worry about those requests. Keeping track of a stack of paper job requisitions and applications just doesn’t make sense.”

Because Home Health Foundation has three separate agencies, Rachel appreciates being able to seamlessly move applicants between agencies. “If someone applies to the VNA and I think they are more appropriate for Home Care Inc., I can just re-assign them to another position in the system and have all of the notes follow that individual’s application in the system.” Rachel also values the ability to track the applicant history in the system. “We’ve had people apply to every position posted on the website. Now I have a central view of how many times each applicant has applied, and all of the positions that they applied for.” The recruiting team recently leveraged the stored applicant history to market new positions. “We were recruiting speech therapists, and I was able send a mailing to every person who has applied for a speech therapist position in the last few years. We avoided sending a cold mailing.”

It is not just the recruiting team at Home Health Foundation that has appreciated the increased efficiency in hiring. “The feedback on Position Manager from the rest of the organization has been very positive. Managers prefer it over the paper system. Everything gets done much more quickly.”

Creating a positive applicant experience

In 2006, Home Health Foundation re-designed their paper application and HealthcareSource helped them roll out a matching online application. Today, 80% of applications come through the website. “The online applications make tracking so much easier, and save me a lot of time,” said Rachel. “We used to manually send out cards each time we received a resume. Now, the system sends an automated response, so we stopped sending out the cards. Also, I don’t have to make copies of resumes and paper applications.” For home health providers who have to process thousands of applications, this saves real time and money. Beyond the time savings, the greatest value for Home Health Foundation in the online application is that it reinforces a positive image of the organization. “It leaves a good impression of us with the applicant, and makes us look more professional. We are a large, established, and well-respected agency, and it goes along with that image.” Candidate experience at the application stage goes a long way in attracting quality employees, who are caring and skilled.

A valued partner

Home Health Foundation appreciates working with a vendor who understands the unique challenges of the home health environment, and gets value from being part of a community of similar healthcare providers that use Position Manager. And most importantly, working with people who care. “I went to the HealthcareSource User Conference in September 2006, and I am still speaking to the same people that I met three years ago. It is nice to see that they also care about keeping their own employees,” said Rachel. “I worked with Christine during implementation and she made the set-up process very easy.”

“In all of the years that we have been a customer, HealthcareSource has not become complacent. It seems like they are always looking towards the future and working to add the next big thing. I would definitely recommend Position Manager to other home care organizations.”

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