OSF Healthcare
Beaumont Hospitals efficiently screen candidates with HealthcareSource and TestSource
Quality care in a challenging environment
Beaumont Hospitals has grown from a single 238-bed hospital - opened in 1955 to serve a small community in Royal Oak, Michigan - into a three-hospital regional medical center with over 20,000 employees representing more than 91 medical and surgical specialties. Beaumont is a high volume healthcare provider - its hospitals rank among the highest in the country in inpatient admissions, community hospital beds, and number of surgeries. Michigan’s poor economy and high unemployment rate are affecting Beaumont, as patients are postponing or simply not having diagnostic tests or other elective procedures because of insurance or financial considerations. But these challenges do not get in the way of Beaumont’s focus on the quality of care. Beaumont is singled out by diverse and respected organizations and institutions for its strong performance – including U.S. News and World Report “America’s Best Hospitals”, Magnet status, AHA Quest for Quality and HealthGrades® “America’s 50 Best Hospitals.”
How does Beaumont achieve such strong performance in such a challenging environment? “We hire people who have a strong quality and customer service orientation,” said Linda Kruso, Director of Workforce Planning for Beaumont.
Finding the right employees doesn’t happen by accident
In 2007, Beaumont invested in technology from two leading companies in healthcare talent management – HealthcareSource® and TestSource®. “We have over 75,000 job applications per year, 22 recruiters, and approximately 1,000 hiring managers – it is just too big an operation to not be efficient. By automating processes, we can focus our efforts on quality hiring, not on pushing paper.” They selected Position Manager® from HealthcareSource for their applicant tracking, and the Healthcare Selection Inventory® from TestSource for their behavioral-based pre-employment assessment.
“We were on an older applicant tracking solution that was just not user friendly. Our hiring managers had no access or visibility, our recruiters could neither rank nor sort candidates, and there was no onboarding capability. Position Manager solved all of that and more,” said Kruso. “Recruiters love Position Manager – it’s easy to use. Hiring managers love it too – the turnaround time is so much quicker. And we’ve really improved the whole candidate experience.”
“We also wanted to do a better job on improving fit and quality of our hires. With the efficiency of Position Manager, we can use the time savings to have our recruiters drill down on a candidate’s customer service and quality orientation. We wanted to quickly identify who were the best candidates, and focus our time on the right people. We also wanted to support the hiring managers and recruiters on candidate-specific interview questions.” The solution was the Healthcare Selection Inventory (HSI) from TestSource. “We put a lot of change in place in a short time, and like all change, it took getting used to. But now our recruiters really love it. They get much better insight into the candidates, ask better questions and hire better people. The recruiters feel that they are doing a better job supporting the hiring managers. And most important, we really believe we are hiring better fit employees, and that our retention rates will improve over time as a result,” commented Kruso.
One plus one can equal three
HealthcareSource and TestSource have a long standing partnership and product integration. “We had a vision for how we wanted to do things, and we dove right in. We implemented both HealthcareSource and TestSource and integrated the systems. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy the integration was. There really wasn’t anything for us to do. HealthcareSource and TestSource did it all behind the scenes.”
Applicants, after filling out an employment application in Position Manager, are automatically directed to the HSI to complete a 15-minute survey. This ensures an easy one-step process for candidates. Recruiters can view all applicants in Position Manager and score only those that they are interested in. They score a survey by clicking on a link in that candidate’s record and are brought directly into the HSI. Applicant data is brought over, reducing the need for duplicate data entry. The results provide interviewers with quantitative data along with behavioral-based interview questions.
More than just integrated products — two vendors working as one
“We knew we wanted vendors who understood healthcare. That is what separated both HealthcareSource and TestSource. But we got more than that. Both companies are so customer oriented and make things so easy. We were very aggressive in how much we wanted to do with Position Manager – we are real power users. Our implementation manager at HealthcareSource kept saying, ‘It will be ok, we’ll get it done, it will be fine.’ And it was. He was very helpful,” commented Kruso. “And working with TestSource was the same experience. Their responsiveness is fantastic. They listen and react. They are so open-minded to new ideas and suggestions. And both companies work so well together. No finger pointing, no issues. It was like working with one vendor.”
“We wanted to get full value from both systems and didn’t want to risk losing momentum by not doing it all at once. It was intense, but I would do it that way again. We pushed to do it once and do it right. And we did. It was a very successful project,” said Kruso. “It’s wonderful. So much easier to status candidates, screen candidates, and keep track of candidates – the two tools together have streamlined processes considerably.”
Independent research found the ROI on Position Manager is less than 6 months.