REDUCE AGENCY SPEND ON SOCIAL CARE RECRUITMENT

 

Let OUTT show you how to reduce agency spend on social care recruitment – control your agency staffing budget, reduce costs, and streamline your Rota!

 

Agency staff are the backbone of the social care sector, providing vital support for care homes and social care organizations that need to fill urgent vacancies quickly. Contingent workers are usually able to respond fast to staff shortages, provide cover for holidays and sickness absences, and plug gaps in the workforce when crucial short staffing can be a crisis for a health and social care recruitment agencies facility.

 

However, the costs of advertising, interviewing, recruiting and conducting right to work checks can put tremendous strain on budgets and workflows, with workforce managers struggling to keep up with demand, while retaining high standards of staffing.

 

OUTT aims to change the way recruitment, working, and staff retention is managed, with a new model created in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis to address the critical staffing shortages deepening across the health and social care jobs sector.

 

SOCIAL CARE RECRUITMENT – REDUCE AGENCY SPEND

 

The first factor in appointing quality agency staff is in recruitment; and traditional adverts in local press not only cost a fortune, but also often fail to engage with the key staff you hope to reach.

 

Bland, uninspiring job adverts don’t convey the value of the opportunities on offer, and so often we work with employers who follow the same recruitment template, advertised in the same places, which hasn’t been a successful recruitment strategy for many years.

 

·         Digital recruitment is cheaper, faster, and more effective at reaching a younger workforce who increasingly look for job opportunities online.

 

·         Dynamic, exciting adverts that explain what perks and benefits you are offering are more likely to garner responses than following a traditional template.

 

·         Remember that your recruitment strategy is the first impression you make with potential applicants, so think about the culture of your social care worker organization, and how you want that to come across to candidates.

 

 

·         Don’t make a job ad just about what you want from an applicant; explain what you are offering in return.

 

·         Think about your own online presence; remember that most jobseekers will research your organization before applying!

 

In a sector where quality professionals and enthusiastic trainees are in high demand, you need to stand out from the competition, and leverage digital recruitment in a way that delivers the response you need, from the candidates you want to hear from.

 

OUTT is a next-gen recruitment app connecting skilled candidates with quality employers, to bridge the gap between workforce demand and employer engagement.

 

Having seen the issues with traditional recruitment, we have designed a new, digital, interactive and comprehensive app that covers every aspect of recruitment, in a contemporary and streamlined way to make advertising your shifts faster and easier – advertised directly to a pool of vetted, qualified candidates.

 

STREAMLINING SOCIAL CARE APPLICATIONS

 

Once you have addressed your recruitment strategies, the next step in finding the health and social care jobs in london staff you need is in identifying the best way to review applications, and interview your short-listed candidates. This process in itself can be time-consuming, and again, digital innovation is the key to making the whole task faster and more effective.

 

Traditional social care recruitment works like this:

 

·         You list an ad on a jobs site, or in the local press.

 

·         Candidates have to email or post a CV and covering letter.

 

 

·         The workforce manager needs to manually read every application.

 

·         Once they have a short-list, they then need to contact each individual candidate.

 

 

·         Candidates must be invited to interview, and then the time dedicated to meeting each applicant.

 

When you have an urgent vacancy, or need to cover a shift now, this process is unviable, and is often an unnecessary strain on health and social care agencies that don’t have the spare time or resources to allocate to recruitment.

 

There is a different way!

 

OUTT offers employers a way to list their shifts, vacancies and short-term requirements digitally. Candidates receive direct access to information about the post, and this can be quickly matched with skills and qualification requirements, without the manual vetting process.

 

Digital application processes are faster, and more accessible to modern workforces who want a one-click solution to sending their details, and replaces the traditional use of application forms and CVs that can be extremely difficult to compare.

 

The OUTT app is designed for mobiles and handheld devices, and enables applicants to apply for shifts, and employers to filter local candidates and make them an offer, in just a few clicks.

 

REDUCING AGENCY SPEND BUDGETS

 

 

Recruitment can be very expensive indeed, and when you build in the advertising costs, the time required to interview and vett candidates, and agency fees, it can be disproportionately expensive to hire agency staff. That said, short-term workers are vital to most social care settings, and so controlling those costs is essential.

 

OUTT offers a more cost-effective solution to traditional recruitment agencies, both streamlining recruitment and selection processes, and cutting down on the costs associated with finding high-quality social care agency staff.

 

·         Reach out to professional candidates for any variety of job requirements.

 

·         Manage your preferred candidates to choose the best applicants, and make instant offers for shift cover and positions.

 

 

·         Access live compliance documentation and receive the assurance that OUTT has thoroughly vetted every candidate, including right to work checks.

 

·         Upload urgent shift requirements for a rapid response from a 24/7 recruitment service.

 

 

·         Authorize timesheets digitally, reducing time, costs and paperwork.

 

Not only is the service cheaper, but more efficient in every way.

 

By harnessing digital recruitment and applications, you save on the costs of agency fees, while also cutting out the time required to review CVs, manage communications and carry out due diligence checks.

 

BALANCING PERMANENT ROLES WITH SHORT-TERM DEMAND

 

The other essential factor when looking for social care staffing is quality.

 

Quality is key when it comes to excellent care services, highly trained staff, and building a reputation as an outstanding organization. Therefore, continuity with skill requirements is vital, and can be a challenge for care home managers to balance out when looking for short-term agency staff to complement their existing workforce.

 

OUTT also considered this obstacle, and how we could make it easier for social care managers to find the staff they are looking for, and avoid the pitfalls involved in recruiting permanent or long-term staff who might turn out not to be the right person for the role.

 

Here’s how it works:

 

·         Select candidates who match with your requirements from our pool of applicants.

 

·         Offer shifts and placements quickly, with a digital offer process.

 

 

·         Review your staff, and leave feedback on their skills, competencies and work.

 

·         If you find the perfect person and want to offer them a permanent role, simply make the offer through the app!

 

 

This ‘try before you buy’ system and review option resolves the challenge of finding the best quality social care staff; and you can assess past reviews as left by other employers before you decide whether to offer a candidate a shift.

 

By working with agency staff before deciding whether to offer a permanent role, you have the absolute confidence that you only take on the best long-term staff, who you already know deliver exactly the standards of care and attitude that will fit in seamlessly with your workforce.

 

For more information about OUTT, and how we help social care employers reduce and manage their agency spend, visit us online.

 

Original source: -   https://outt.co.uk/social-care-news/social-care-recruitment-reduce-agency-spend/