How Occy Saved Arnfield Care Eight Weeks of Recruitment Time
Arnfield Care provides specialist care and support, with a team of around 100 employees across its homes. As the business has grown, recruitment has become an increasingly important part of its operations. With around 20 to 25 people recruited each year, managing the recruitment process efficiently is essential.
The Problem
As Arnfield Care grew, recruitment became an increasingly time-consuming part of Neil’s role. During its busiest period, the business was recruiting around 50 people a year, leaving Neil with little time to focus on other responsibilities.
With around 600 CVs being screened each month, the recruitment process involved significant amounts of administration, from reviewing candidates and arranging interviews to managing offers, references and onboarding.
At one point, recruitment was taking up as much as 90 to 99% of Neil’s working week.
Although Neil knew a recruitment platform could help reduce this workload, the scale of the time saving was difficult to measure while the business was so busy.
Solutions
Arnfield Care uses Occy to manage and streamline its recruitment process, bringing key stages of recruitment together in one platform.
The team uses Occy to manage candidates through the recruitment pipeline, from applications and CV screening through to interviews, offers and onboarding. Candidate communications and templates also help reduce the amount of repetitive administration Neil needs to complete manually.
Occy also integrates with Totaljobs, helping applications from external job advertising flow into the recruitment system.
By taking much of the administration out of the recruitment process, Occy has allowed Neil to spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on other areas of the business.
The impact has been significant. Neil estimates that Occy saves him around six hours for every candidate taken through the interview process, helping to free up around a quarter of his working week for other priorities.
The impact of Occy has been particularly clear as Arnfield Care has been able to look back at its recruitment activity and quantify the time saved.
Neil from Arnfield Care estimates that Occy saves him around six hours for every candidate taken through the interview process.
In the first seven months of the year, Arnfield Care had:
- Recruited 19 people
- Made 22 offers
- Completed around 40 interviews
- Saved approximately 240 hours of recruitment time
That equates to around eight weeks of working time saved.
The time saving has also changed how Neil’s working week looks. Recruitment previously accounted for around 90 to 99% of his time during particularly busy periods. It now typically accounts for around 70 to 75%.
As Neil explains: “It’s freed up quarter of my week to do other stuff.”
Taking a More Strategic Approach to Recruitment
Occy’s impact has gone beyond simply saving time.
With recruitment still accounting for a significant proportion of Arnfield Care’s activity, the business is increasingly looking at the true cost of hiring and retaining employees.
Neil is currently developing a more detailed recruitment cost model that considers everything from advertising and recruitment software to interview time, training, salaries and overheads.
This is helping the business understand that the cost of recruitment does not end when someone accepts an offer.
A poor hiring decision can result in further recruitment costs, additional training and lost time if an employee leaves shortly after joining.
The aim is therefore to encourage managers to take a more considered approach to recruitment and focus on finding people who are right for the business.
How Has Occy Changed Your Day-to-Day Role?
“It’s definitely saving me enough time to do the other bits of my job.”
Before Occy, Neil found that recruitment could consume almost his entire working week, particularly when the business was recruiting at a higher volume.
By reducing the administrative workload, Occy has given him more time to work on areas outside recruitment, including the company’s website and social media activity.
What Difference Has Occy Made to Your Recruitment Workload?
“I reckon on the typical recruitment, it must be saving me in the region of about six hours per candidate that we take through interviews.”
With around 40 interviews completed in the first seven months of the year, Neil estimates that this has resulted in approximately 240 hours of recruitment time saved.
That is equivalent to around eight weeks of working time.
Has Occy Helped You Take a More Strategic Approach to Recruitment?
The time saved has given Neil more opportunity to look beyond the day-to-day administration of recruitment and consider the wider cost of hiring.
Arnfield Care is now developing a detailed model that considers the cost of advertising, interviews, recruitment time, training and employee turnover.
This is helping the business demonstrate to managers why getting recruitment decisions right first time is so important.
What Would You Say Is the Biggest Benefit of Occy?
For Neil, the biggest benefit is not simply having a system to manage candidates. It is the amount of time that the system has given back to him.
“For me the system is a godsend because I’ve always known it saved me time and the company money.”
That time has allowed him to contribute to wider business projects and focus on areas that would previously have been difficult to fit around recruitment.
The Verdict
After almost three years using Occy, Arnfield Care has seen a clear difference in the amount of time required to manage recruitment.
With approximately 240 hours saved in just seven months, Occy has helped reduce the administrative burden of recruitment and given Neil more time to focus on the wider needs of the business.
As Arnfield Care continues to grow, having a recruitment system that can support its hiring activity while reducing the time spent on administration remains an important part of its approach
“I’ve always known it saved me time and the company money.”