Hospital Corporation for America, HCCA
In June 2005, our US parent began working with HCCA (a division of HCA Holdings, Inc.), one of the largest nurse-placement firms in the US who employ over 180,000 people. The brief was to improve HCCA’s recruitment & selection process – more specifically to improve its hiring decisions and lower its turnover costs.
Through a strategic partnership supported by the CEO and executive team, it implemented our customisable benchmarking process. The goal was to help it to hire and retain more of the right people and to alert it to the possibility of making a bad hire.
The Problem
This nurse-placement firm had been spending millions of dollars to find, interview, hire and train nurses from around the world. After going through an exhaustive interview and hiring process, it spent even more money to move these nurses to the United States and provide a place to live.
What HCCA discovered was that finding nurses was the easy part; finding the right nurses to bring to the US was not so easy.
Here is why..
Many of the potential hires sailed through the interview process. They had adequate skills and quality references, yet many had problems with cultural and attitude differences, as well as other issues, not easily detected during interview.
After passing the current hiring and training process, too many of these nurses would either just return to their native country or get fired for low performance or it would become clear that there was a fundamental problem with their job suitability. Obviously, losing a high percentage of nurses in this way was very expensive for the company. Not only did it affect their bottom line, but damage their reputation as well.
Our Solution
More than 100 nurses, ranked as high, medium and low performers, took the profile to provide data for our bespoke competency model.
Following this roll-out, we asked HCCA for specific feedback to better understand the ultimate value of our benchmark study, assessment tools and custom interview guides. More specifically, we asked for feedback on accuracy and effectiveness in their key problem areas: cost per hire; turnover; customer satisfaction; nurses being fired; leaving early.
The Results
In a six-month period, hiring over 50 nurses a month, our benchmark study and subsequent customised assessment reports resulted in a 28% reduction in HCCA’s cost per hire.
HCCA reported to us that, during just one six-month period, using our bespoke competency modelled profile, it eliminated approximately 100 bad hires who would previously have been recruited. Every bad hire eliminated saved HCCA (conservatively) US$50,000. HCCA estimates that using the bespoke model in its hiring process resulted in savings of about US$5 million.
After receiving and utilising the new report, now adopted worldwide in our recruitment & selection process, we want to thank you for your expertise and patience, as you developed a customised tool which meets our needs so well.
“We especially appreciated your positive approach, flexibility and determination which did not waver throughout the process. We have every confidence that we will be making wiser hiring decisions throughout our network.