Technology and automation help Healthvision hire confidently

Tell us a bit about Healthvision and the services you provide

Stephanie De Mello, Human Resources Coordinator - Healthvision (New Zealand) Ltd provides home healthcare services in New Zealand to clients in the community. We provide a comprehensive wraparound service to our clients in the community with our award-winning team of highly trained nurses, caregivers, and rehab specialists. 

What are the main recruitment challenges you usually face?

Steph - The biggest challenge is ensuring that we recruit the right type of person to fit a specific role. A lot of the people that apply for the roles we’re offering are very agreeable during interviews and say everything we want to hear but, occasionally, when we place them the reality of the role hits and they end up not being as flexible as the role requires. So, it’s really important that we put forward candidates who we’re confident understand what the role will entail. 

Maria Caisson, Human Resources Advisor - A major challenge that Steph and I faced when we first joined Healthvision is that a lot of the processes in place were quite manual and we put in a lot of work to rethink the HR system and get everything to where it is now. There was also a high level of staff turnover, which was a signal for us to rethink the recruitment process and make sure our biggest focus was placing the right people in the right roles. 

How has COVID-19 impacted your hiring?

Steph - To be honest, the COVID-19 situation has helped us to put everything into perspective and understand why it is so important for us to move away from a manual process and build a strong digital, online system. Before the COVID-19 outbreak we were already starting to implement more technology into our process, but the pandemic really helped justify the needs for this.

We’re grateful that we had already started to move away from manual, paper-based ways of doing things when COVID-19 hit because it would have been even more difficult to deal with had we not.

What have been the main benefits of your team using Xref?

Steph - We use Xref to reference all of our healthcare roles as well as our admin and office staff roles. In terms of the business units I recruit for, we are usually onboarding anywhere between 20-30 people a month and considering the number of candidates it would be impossible for us to do manual reference checks for everyone. We rely heavily on Xref to just take care of the reference checking process for us. We find the unusual activity alerts that Xref offers incredibly helpful too, especially given the kind of roles we are hiring for - we need to be certain that people are trustworthy.

Maria - Xref is so simple to use, before this role I’d not had any experience with the platform, but it is very easy to get up to speed with. It is great to be able to easily tailor the reference check questions for different roles as we hire across so many different skill sets. Before using Xref there was only one set of questions for every candidate hired across all of the different roles so Xref has certainly had a big impact on the quality of references we are receiving.

Steph - The biggest benefit I’ve experienced is the amount of time we save while using Xref. When I used to have to take verbal reference checks (in my previous roles) via the phone it was so time consuming just to get hold of the reference, often when I did get through to them, I would catch them at a bad time and have to call them back. I am very thankful that I don't have to do that anymore. I love that referees can fill out an Xref reference check at their own convenience and we don’t need to do anything to chase them. I can’t even begin to calculate the amount of time that Xref has actually saved me each day. 

Maria - Another major benefit for me is that you have a more accurate representation of the referee’s feedback compared to taking a verbal reference and trying to write down what they said. It is very easy to misinterpret a verbal reference, so having the reference written in the referee’s own words is very beneficial and provides more accurate insight into the candidate. 

Steph - Xref gives us the opportunity to run a very smooth reference checking process and helps us to pick up on data we otherwise would have missed, such as suspicious activity. We are also very grateful to be working with Xref's New Zealand team who are so incredibly responsive to our needs and are always happy to help us with any questions we have no matter how silly they might be! We love how proactive they are, reaching out with updates and offering us training to get more out of the platform. We are very impressed with the whole Xref experience.

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