The Aequor Healthcare Services and TherapyStaff brands have been in business for over 20 years, and they’ll proudly tell you, for most of those 20 years, they did business ‘old school style.’ The business was built on a physical file system, an effective model that served the company for over two decades even through massive, 3x growth in the last few years. It was a reliable strategy until the team realized how much further ahead other staffing firms were with technology and knew they needed to catch up.
Then, in the Fall of 2019, things changed. “We just blinked and realized we were so far behind on technology and missing out even though we were doing well,” said William Klabo, Vice President of TherapyStaff. “We just saw a conference full of people that were doing all this advanced stuff. And it was like, “Wow, this is amazing what we could be doing.”
After realizing how much opportunity was ahead of them, the team made it their mission to fill at least three critical gaps with technology in the first quarter of 2020 alone. Having implemented Bullhorn the year prior, it came time to select key solutions that made their teams work smarter, deliver better experiences, and accelerate hiring. When it came to their current approach to talent outreach, Aequor Healthcare Services knew then that they needed to get serious about prioritizing communication and engagement technology.
“We had a lot of problems. We did a lot of mass communication, emails, and things like that in the past and we just couldn't get results. We would be flagged a lot,” says Klabo. “We weren't working with companies or technology to monitor our delivery or success.” On top of delivery issues, the messages that did make it to candidates weren’t personalized or compelling, and recruiters didn’t have an easy way to get in touch at scale aside from individual emails or single text messages.
Seeing the possibility of communication and engagement technology like Sense became real after attending a live session at the SIA Executive Forum conference led by Co-Founder Pankaj Jindal: reactivating dormant candidates in an untouched database through automation, accelerating growth with two-way texting, retaining talent with personalized check-ins and feedback - the potential results were limitless and left a lot of questions on the table for Aequor Healthcare Service’s current processes.
A particular area that caught the Aequor Healthcare Services team’s ear? Retaining talent and getting the most out of their new database investment. With a single System of Engagement like Sense, not only were these possibly, they were measurable. “I was sold on the retention piece. Not only how we're retaining but also, are we getting the most out of our database? How many submissions, how many confirmations, what’s our conversion rate? How many jobs do we have open, how could we be better measuring what we’re doing.”
The excitement of the future became a reality after selecting Sense for both automation and two-way texting. From the core functionality and integration with Bullhorn to the extra ‘bells and whistles,’ Sense offered a path to modern engagement strategies for Aequor Healthcare Services and the team. As for their ambitious goals for 2020, the Sense team was up to meet the call and partner each step of the way.
“The Sense team made this easy for us, they went to the moon and back for what we were setting out to do. As we kicked off as a group at the beginning with implementation, they did an excellent job and delivered effective training to get us and our teams up and running fast.”
In a matter of weeks, the Aequor Healthcare Services team was set up and ready to hold technology training sessions facilitated by the Sense team, at which point they went live with Sense Messaging the same afternoon. Accelerating digital transformation in an organization like Aequor Healthcare Services takes coordinated change management, and getting the team equipped with two-way texting through Sense Messaging was an immediate win.
“Everybody, 100% of the people have said it's a major improvement. Even that day it went live, I was asking people, “What do you think about it?” And within a day people were like, “Absolutely, this is phenomenal. We can do things we couldn't do and what we were doing, we can do even better now.”
From new, critical capabilities like targeted, mass texting to the little things like emojis, signatures, and hosting their own phone numbers through Sense Messaging, the personal pieces made a difference and the solution was a natural fit for Aequor Healthcare Services’ recruiters. The team started to feel return right away through time savings alone, and the high-quality solution out of the gate has proven that digital transformation was a worthwhile investment. With the height of the Covid-19 pandemic accelerating demand for healthcare workers, the timing couldn’t have been better.
“It just completely delivered when we needed it to. Right when we got everything set up, we literally doubled the size of our nursing team,” says Klabo. “And when we look back and see exactly what it was - we had direct communication with extremely high bill rates and we were able to plug into the new technology we were using to capture more talent, and then we got referrals from them. And we're then off to the races. We would have filled some jobs manually without the technology, but not like that.”
The opportunity to use Sense Engage and Sense Messaging brought the power of omni-channel automation and two-way texting to the forefront of Aequor Healthcare Services’ communication and engagement strategy. With Sense Messaging up and running, the team is gearing up for the next phase of digital transformation: personalized automation across email and SMS.
And the future is bright - with over 20+ automated Journeys already planned across the entire talent lifecycle (and more planned for the future), Aequor Healthcare Services is poised to take advantage of all the benefits of a complete System of Engagement. From data reactivation in Bullhorn and accelerating hiring to maximizing productivity and empowering contractor care, the possibilities of modern recruiting are becoming a reality.
“Looking back to where we came from, it's a different world. We really thought we were doing it the best way - we would actually have files on people's desks that they worked through, pull out the file cabinet like the old days. So it's been a great transformation and I know we're only getting started as we dive into artificial intelligence and more,” explains Klabo. “When the automation and AI comes through, it's not only time back for the recruiters but it's service. The customer service and locking onto these people as we go through the talent journey. I think that's what we're most excited about."
Sense works with staffing firms like Aequor Healthcare Services to identify areas for improvement and create impactful action plans to drive change. To see how Sense can help you, talk to our representative today.
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