Active Care Group - redefining recruitment and onboarding compliance success

Health and Care

Active Care Group - redefining recruitment and onboarding compliance success

Active Care Group is the UK’s pioneering provider of complex care. With over 60 locations and 4000 employees, they’re a huge care operation that implemented our applicant tracking system to support and streamline a robust hiring process.

Their goals were to improve the candidate experience and journey, increase automation and streamline recruitment, and improve the quality and content of reporting. They went live with our ATS platform in July 2022.

Here we chat with Richard Young (Head of Recruitment & Onboarding), Luke Bellingham (HR Manager Onboarding) and Beth Kiely (Recruitment Team Leader) about their experiences so far of implementing, recruiting, and using the onboarding and compliance features in our applicant tracking system.

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Why did you start looking for a new Applicant Tracking System?

We had two applicant tracking systems before implementing Jobtrain. As we merged our main businesses, each had a different applicant tracking system, so it made sense to streamline all of that and move to a single ATS platform.

Another of the major reasons was to bring our onboarding processes into the applicant tracking system. Our previous ATS didn’t integrate with our onboarding processes so anything that was passed to our Onboarding team was very manual, completed outside of the system and was a very admin-heavy process.

“There isn’t a stitch of a seam between the ATS recruitment part and the new hire onboarding part – it’s one big, streamlined conveyer.”

Active Care Group

Why did you choose Jobtrain and what made us stand out from other providers?

Jobtrain’s ATS comes with an onboarding powerhouse and that was a big selling point for us.

All the Onboarding features, from the Welcome Hub and the Enhanced Onboarding and Compliance functionality, tie in with the ATS part so well. There isn’t a stitch of a seam between the ATS recruitment part and the new hire onboarding part – it’s one big, streamlined conveyer.

Having all the information already in the ATS, with just a click of a button our team can send references and contracts, helping us reduce the administrative burden because the ATS does all of the heavy lifting for us.

As Active Care Group operates in a sector that is heavily reliant on compliance for safeguarding reasons, onboarding is obviously very important to us. But if we just focussed on the value of the onboarding functionality, we’d be doing Jobtrain a disservice.

“Jobtrain’s ATS has a powerful front-end too that allows us to integrate with other platforms, such as job boards.”

The flexibility of the system and the way Jobtrain as a company lets us contribute to the design and scope of the platform, has helped us define a more robust recruitment process too. Jobtrain is a provider who is ready and willing to work collaboratively to achieve success.

We did look at other systems, but the integration and implementation stories from Jobtrain were really important to us – and if we add in the other functionality available alongside onboarding and compliance, then we knew Jobtrain was the ATS for us.

What was it like to implement Jobtrain? Was it what you expected?

The process was thorough, detailed, guided, robust, and had a clear structure so we always stayed on track. We’ve been frustrated with the lack of planning when implementing applicant tracking systems in the past, but the Project Implementation team at Jobtrain was very transparent and organised and we always felt included every step of the way.

It felt like you’d done many implementations before, it was so thorough and supportive!

Other providers don’t compare to Jobtrain’s support, implementation, and training. We know that if there was ever an issue, it would get picked up straight away, rather than sit in somebody’s inbox for a week.

The implementation process took just 10 weeks – and for us, that was unheard of! We had an ATS that covered recruitment and onboarding within just a couple of months. We couldn’t have gotten this far without Jobtrain.

What’s the recruitment experience like now for your candidates?

Having Jobtrain has really enhanced the entire candidate experience from recruitment right through to onboarding. The feedback we’ve had from candidates has been positive and we’ve been able to speed up the process too.

Just in terms of onboarding and compliance, our record is now just 24 hours to get a candidate through compliance – that’s completing an offer pack, compliance pack and references – it was a lot longer before!

Because the system is so easy to use, candidates are returning requested documents so much quicker.

We also use the reporting functionality to identify candidates who are delayed at second-stage application, so we can reach out if they’re having any trouble.

Our ability to advertise promptly and flex with the adverts too has also been a huge help in attracting candidates.

If anything, we don’t think we’ve leveraged the full power of what Jobtrain’s candidate experience can give us yet, there’s so much to the system, but we’re excited to keep exploring!

Has our self-service calendar helped with getting candidates in for interview?

We haven’t rolled this feature out fully yet, but when we have used it to recruit into some of our teams, we’ve found it incredibly helpful. To be able to allocate timeslots to candidates to book their interview time is a real time saver for a busy manager and helps us deliver a good experience for candidates too.

How have you found the reporting functionality?

Operationally, we’re able to pull some really useful reports from it. It’s a powerful tool where we can create all kinds of reports and, as a busy manager, it’s really helping us to keep our system clean and has made our lives so much easier!

We use it every day, pulling reports each morning to stay on top of bottlenecks, open jobs, start dates, second-stage applications etc.

What’s the experience been like for your Hiring Managers?

We’re in the process of rolling it out to the wider organisation, but the response has been very positive from the group we’ve trialled it with at three of our largest hospitals. We love how simple it is to make specific user levels for our Hiring Managers too. We can tailor their view, so they only see and access information that’s relevant to them so it’s not an overly complicated system for them to use.

Giving Hiring Managers as much or as little access as we see fit is a really unique and special tool for us. It’s given us the capability to standardise processes with our managers.

“Having Hiring Managers access the ATS has quickened offer processes too! The offer process is now down to about 2 minutes and we get that information instantly. It’s made us strategic, rather than reactive.”

How would you describe your experience with the support we provide?

Organised, responsive, and invaluable.

The support we get from Jobtrain is amazing and both the customer service and implementation experience has exceeded all expectations. Having the visibility of a support function through a contact centre and through Jamie, our Continuous Improvement Consultant has been exceptional.

We can call your contact centre at any time of the working day and ask all sorts of questions, we always feel supported – it’s great! When we log a support ticket, we get a response back incredibly quickly.

It’s not just the support we have access to as a client either – the support our candidates get from Jobtrain has been a huge help and lightens the load for us.

What’s your favourite feature of Jobtrain so far?

We have two favourite features! The first is how simple the system is for the candidate and us, as the client.

The second is the smooth transition from recruitment to onboarding. The module gives us a system that brings everything together. The fact we can see where everyone’s at, all in one place, means we can effectively manage our team.

What’s next for Active Care Group and your plans with Jobtrain?

We’re excited to start our internal project to start rolling out the Onboarding Welcome Hub to get our new hires ready after they’ve completed the compliance elements of onboarding.

We’ll also start using much more of the reporting and MI features, especially now we have more of our own recruitment data to report on. We’re particularly looking forward to using the reporting features to feedback to our investors with information on the return on their investment too.