To combat the consequences of a high turnover rate, an organization has two responses. They can either focus on retaining their team or reduce their time-to-hire for restaffing their workforce. Truly, every organization should attempt both.
Make no mistake. Turnover rates for ABA therapists are very high. The 2022 ABA Compensation & Turnover Report from the BHCOE Accreditation averages the turnover rate at 65%. The reasons are clear: modest pay, difficult case loads, and burnout. We covered workforce retention in our blog How to Lower Turnover for ABA Therapists which provides valuable information for combating burnout, but here we will discuss the other side of the coin.
If you can quickly source applicants, interview, and hire new ABA therapists reliably, you can curb the impact caused by high turnover. It helps reduce the strain on the rest of the team and ensures better care for your patients.
Below, we will discuss strategies to reduce your time-to-hire without sacrificing quality in the applicant pool or the patient experience.
Benefits of Reducing Time-to-Hire
Time-to-hire is an industry metric that measures the time between a candidate applying for a position and accepting the job offer. It reflects the expediency of the internal recruiting or hiring team’s ability to review applications, interview candidates, make a formal decision, and prepare necessary paperwork. Though a hiring process may seem straightforward, it requires the interworking of people in multiple departments and digital tools while ensuring compliance with hiring regulations. There are many moving parts that must operate in concert for the process to go smoothly.
”The rest of the therapy team must either pick up these appointments to compensate or lose the patients as clients.
But there are significant benefits to those organizations who invest in and streamline their hiring processes:
Reducing Time-to-Hire for ABA Therapists
There are five key strategies to employ to optimize the hiring process:
1
Map and Formalize Your Hiring Process
Map out your current hiring process from application to offer and note all of the steps, tools, and team members involved. From there, you can create a repeatable, structured process to move applicants through screening, interviews, and finally the offer. This mapping exercise will allow you to take a high level view of the full operation. Inefficiencies and gaps will become clear during your review.
Further, map out the onboarding process as well with the same level of detail. Hiring should transition seamlessly to onboarding, and optimizing the onboarding process delivers many of the same benefits as a modern hiring process.
2
Optimize Your Job Listings
Zippa notes that the average ABA therapist only remains at their job for between 1 – 2 years. To help reduce this turnover, be as clear as possible regarding the expectations of the position in the job listing while remaining enticing. This will ensure that the applicant who ultimately accepts the position is not surprised by the workload, travel, or other elements of the job. I
Additionally, where the job opportunity is placed is often as important as how it is written. There may be websites beyond Indeed, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn where you can source top applicants. For instance Apploi Hire distributes to dozens of top job boards, many of them healthcare specific. See the list at apploi.com/partners.
”If you are still operating through Microsoft Excel, email, and phone calls, there is an opportunity to greatly improve the process.
3
Communicate More with Automation
When seeking a new position, the common wisdom is to send followup emails after interviews and engagements. The idea is that the more contact you have with a company, the more likely they are to remember and hire you. The same is true from the other side of the table. Employers who stay in touch with their applicants throughout the hiring process are more likely to have their job offers accepted.
Review the map of your hiring process to find places to touch base with your applicants, even if just explaining next steps. Each point of contact reassures the applicant that their candidacy is still being considered and they still have a shot at the position.
Of course, each new touchpoint adds another step, another responsibility onto the hiring team. Organizations trying to recruit for multiple facilities may find it impossible to maintain this level of communication. Automation and digital tools provide a ready solution here. Most applicants do not need or want multiple phone calls from the organization, but a low pressure channel, like an SMS text message, paired with automation can deliver the light touch applicants want without burdening the hiring team.
When sourcing technology solutions to automate SMS and email communications, confirm that the solution does not impose a fee for sending messages. Some applicant tracking systems (ATS) charge per communication or provide a monthly quota, while other solutions offer unlimited messaging. Follow ups are a critical part of the hiring process and the temptation to send fewer messages to avoid fees undermines the effectiveness of the ATS.
“gives us automations — if you wait a couple days, you’ll lose them.”
– Ezi Neger, CEO, EZcare Staffing
4
Screen Before Interviewing
Interviews are the biggest bottleneck in the hiring process. Though essential, it requires dedicated time on the schedule for each applicant. Even a brief 30-minute interview across ten candidates is more than a half day’s work devoted to hiring.
To expedite this process, implement a candidate screening step before interviewing with the hiring manager. The candidate screening step provides an opportunity to ensure each applicant that is interviewed is credentialed, qualified, and a good cultural fit.
Use a screening process to filter out unsuitable candidates:
- Phone Screening Phone screening confirms the pay, job duties, benefits, and other aspects of the position are well-understood and agreeable to the applicant.
- Credential Verification Ensure the candidate has all necessary licenses and certifications for the position. We recommend deploying software solutions, such as Apploi Hire, that will verify certifications automatically and (optionally) before you spend time interviewing.
- Personality Assessments Some employers utilize pre-employment assessments, often in the form of personality tests. This is the point in the hiring process where those assessments can be introduced and administered to the applicant.
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5
Develop a Talent Pipeline
Thus far, strategies to reduce time-to-hire have revolved around documenting and improving processes, so that when a vacancy opens on the team, you are ready to spring into action. It’s all reactive.
To take proactive action, you can develop a talent pipeline while the team is fully staffed. Source a list of qualified potential applicants and keep this list in reserve. Treat it like professional networking. Make attempts to form and build a professional relationship with these individuals, so that when a position does open up, you can turn the talent pipeline into your shortlist of candidates.
A great way to begin building this list is to retain the contact information of those applicants who interviewed but did not receive a job offer. Perhaps some of these applicants were a strong fit, but there was simply a better candidate. Alternatively, professional groups and social media groups can be excellent places to meet colleagues.
Deploy an Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a straight path to implementing the strategies in this article. By using an ATS, like Apploi Hire, you can centralize the hiring process onto one platform, throw out your applicant spreadsheets, and customize automation rules that keep your applicants engaged.
To improve an existing process, you need data, and an ATS can collect and report on key metrics that determine the quality of the hiring process. If you want to beat the average time-to-hire in healthcare of 59.5 days, you must know how long it took last month, the month before that, as well as the trend line moving forward.
Learn more about creating an exceptional hiring process and explore the candidate engagement platform from Apploi.
