Our Care Advantage usage are seeing a significant increase in job applicants due to these extraordinary COVID-19 times. Although many of these people come from non-care sector backgrounds lacking relevant skills or experience, these skills can often be taught on the job as long as the person has the right personality and attitude to work. 

Smart Sort is Smart and Fast!
We have developed the Smart Sort tool to quickly identify which applicants in the pool have a strong job fit (as compared to a benchmark of high-performers in the same role) and have an acceptable behavioural risk profile to work (e.g no hostility or integrity risk). 

Smart Sort takes the pool of applicants and quickly sorts and ranks them based on their assessment results. From here the recruiter can adjust the search parameters or use the proximity search, highlighting people who live within a certain distance to the job. 

The result is a long list of "best-match" applicants to follow up with initially. Saving the recruiters heaps of valuable time, so they can focus on getting the right workforce for these challenging times. 

See for yourself
Contact us if you'd like to see Smart Sort in action via our fast-track demo option (obligation and cost free!). See why such a large number of providers are relying on the information from the Care Advantage assessments to enhance hiring decisions and workforce performance. 

Our view on working in the COVID-19 world
Just like many other businesses, our office staff are all working from from home and are taking all safety precautions as directed by the government. We can no longer offer face-to-face training sessions and meetings, but other than that, we are business "as usual".

The workforce shift
Many of our clients are building an "emergency" or "back-up" workforce for when times get tougher. The creation of new jobs brings opportunities for those huge numbers of people who recently lost theirs. The subsequent recruitment task is just as large and met with novel challenges. For example, group recruitment drives are no longer an option and many clients are thus exploring video interviewing. 

Screen for attitudes, teach the skills
We are seeing an increase in interest in behavioural screening as many applicants now come from non-care sectors. The lack of relevant work experience does not necessarily have to be a problem, as long as the person has the right job fit, values and attitude to work. Although this does not work for all roles, there are certainly roles which can be learned on the job.

We have thereby developed new functionality that helps to quickly screen large applicant pools to find those people with the best job fit and attitude to work. Hopefully this will ease some of the recruitment processing efforts. 

Being able to do our assessments at home, online and thus remote, is another factor that has seen an increase in demand. The free Career Trait Profile report that many candidates automatically receive after completing the assessments is a valuable tool in their search for a job. 

Stay safe!
​These are extraordinary times affecting billions of people around the globe. Let's hope that in the not so distant future we can meet up with a group of friends and think back to the time when the world stood still. In the meantime we will continue to help smooth out the recruitment screening process and wish for people to stay safe and healthy whilst getting used to their new "normal".

With an increasingly consumer driven environment, added pressure on funding, a care workforce whose average age is also increasing and clients/residents living longer it is no wonder there is a strong focus on ensuring that a future aged care system remains sustainable, affordable and flexible.
 
Of the 5 Strategic Imperatives identified by the Aged Care Workforce Strategy Taskforce (ACWST) – headed up by Professor John Pollaers – one of the most critical has been the industry’s ability to attract and retain care staff.
 
For many years we have worked together with Neil Eastwood, a highly regarded advisor and consultant on workforce recruitment and retention in the Social Care sector in the UK. Neil is the author of Saving Social Care which tackles this very subject. The UK has been operating in a consumer driven environment around 8 years now and whilst funding arrangements and regulation are different, there are many common challenges.
 
With great thanks to Neil, we have adapted his Practical Tips Program and created 52 weekly tips to help you better source, recruit and retain your care staff. Here is a sample, but if you want to get all of them, across the full year, sign up to our Weekly Tips mailing list.

1. Your relationship with Universities Nurses and allied health students get great feedback as frontline staff. They can’t stay forever but can often work less popular hours. Can you offer some practical training directly related to their course? Try the tutors, student welfare, noticeboards and referrals to get started.

2. Online sources can miss older Care Workers: Mobile job seekers are weighted towards the <25s, Facebook is most used by 25-34yr olds, but longest serving care staff are 50+. Make sure you don’t forget offline sources too..

​3. Non-committal responses: It’s important to listen for non-committal responses to interview questions about availability, pay etc. such as "I think so", "That's fine", Not really". These are proven flags to non-commitment and easy to spot if you are aware. Then the interviewer knows to dig.

​4. Care workers can make insightful interviewers: Involve care staff in interviewing candidates. They know what the job entails and being asked assists staff engagement which is a critical part of retention.

5. Smile more: Approximately 17% of resignations reported a friendly smile or a helpful colleague would have changed their mind. The early days of employment are so critical for long-term tenure.

6. A role for performance-related pay? Rarely used in care but successful elsewhere - recognise six months with no lateness or missed shifts (e.g. 1 hour off paid per month). If you have an absence issue this could be worth a trial.

Enjoyed these tips? Click here to sign up to more of these (interesting, relevant, surprising, clever) gems.