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Fairfield Medical Center Achieves LEAN Hiring Processes
Learn how Fairfield Medical Center improved their hiring process, significantly reduced annual turnover and avoided $3.45 million in costs.
As health care organizations face growing competitive pressures, how can they identify and maintain a competitive edge?
Increasingly, forward-looking organizations are integrating LEAN practices into their daily processes to ensure more agile operations and identify opportunities for improvement. Each year, Fairfield Medical Center hires approximately 400 employees. In 2007, the organization noticed a disturbing trend. According to Janet Cooper, a long-time recruiter for Fairfield Medical Center, the annual turnover rate was nearly 16%, almost 2% above the Ohio Hospital Association benchmark at the time. Debra Palmer, the Director of Talent Development & Resources for Fairfield Medical Center, says the turnover was costing the facility around $4.5 million per year.
Grappling with a high turnover rate
The unacceptable turnover rate served as a catalyst for Fairfield Medical Center to launch a LEAN initiative within its HR group, with a goal of reducing turnover to 10% annually. As part of the initiative, the facility had to improve the way it processed applications and communicated with candidates.
“We had no streamlined way to identify who had applied for a particular position. When we relied on paper applications, we had to review each one manually and literally walk applications over to hiring managers. Even the online system we adopted wasn’t much help as it didn’t provide many options for organizing the information we collected,” explains Cooper.
This laborious process slowed down hiring. Moreover, with little insight into the status of any given applicant, the recruiting staff at Fairfield Medical Center struggled to communicate updates to candidates.
Turning to a trusted partner
Recognizing a need to improve its hiring practices, Fairfield Medical Center began exploring its options. Already a user of HealthcareSource Staff AssessmentSM formerly TestSource HSI, for behavioral science-based assessments of candidates, the organization turned to HealthcareSource for assistance in streamlining its cumbersome hiring process.
After assessing the capabilities of Position Manager®, the applicant tracking solution from HealthcareSource, and talking to other local hospitals using the solution, Fairfield Medical Center was convinced it could help the organization improve its processes and better serve candidates and hiring managers. Within 30 days of being trained, the HR team and hiring managers were up and running.
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