NHS Healthcare Hiring

This NHS trust was concerned over the pressures on its nurses. Their time was being increasingly taken up by hospital administration and spending too much time sitting in interviews for new members of staff.

As well as finding a way to reduce the administration associated with hiring nurses, Chemistry needed to ensure nurses who were hired genuinely cared for patients. Because research suggested that patient outcomes, such as speed to recovery, were linked to patients’ belief that their nursing staff cared for them.

Chemistry undertook an extensive piece of work to objectively define What Great Looks Like for the nurses in this particular NHS trust.

Using patient feedback data, role observations, stakeholder interviews and workshops we were able to determine the difference between a nurse that would demonstrate compassion in the organisational context of The Trust, and one that wouldn’t.

Chemistry designed a fully branded online assessment tool that assessed an individual’s potential to be caring and compassionate for patients. The tool was presented to applicants as part of a seamless online experience by integrating it into the Trust’s Applicant Tracking System.

The tool instantly reduced nurses’ time spent on interviews and manual application screening, establishing a quality not quantity approach to recruitment.

• There was an overall reduction in the number of candidates having to be manually screened with a vast improvement in face-to-face interview ratio success.
• Chemistry’s follow up tracking showed individuals recruited using Chemistry’s assessment received higher patient feedback scores
• Staff absence of nurses hired via Chemistry’s assessment was 4% compared to the trust average of 10%
• The hospital was named as one of the safest in England, for both nurse staffing levels and patient safety systems.