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A specialist recruiter is filling shifts faster and has doubled its turnover following a major technology upgrade, according to its director, who wishes he’d done it years ago.
Connect Health and Elite Hospitality Personnel director Paul Morrison says the cost and efficiency gains achieved since last year’s upgrade have far exceeded his expectations.
Kicking off the new Entire OnHire system from September, the first month alone netted a 43% increase in Connect Health’s capacity to fill shifts, with flow-on effects to its volume, he says.
Across both businesses, Morrison says weekly revenue has gone from around $90k to nearer $200k.
“We should have bloody done it years ago!” Morrison tells Shortlist.
The complete end-to-end solution “has really helped us grow the business”, and improved “transparency and visibility over exactly what each member within the office is doing, and where they’re at”, he adds.
Morrison, who acquired Connect Health in 2018, had been looking to implement a $480k technology upgrade to streamline processes when COVID hit and the hospitality business came to a virtual standstill. (Morrison established Elite Hospitality in 2015, and after struggling to crack into the aged care market, entered an affiliation arrangement with Connect Health in 2016, before buying it two years later.)
However, the developer commissioned to work on the new system “went bust” due to the pandemic, leaving the company almost $200k out of pocket. “That was a bitter pill to swallow,” he says.
Morrison says he realised that after that loss, it was the “perfect time” to look at streamlining all processes, and quickly.
“We gave [Entire Software] an eight-week turnaround from the first meeting to having everything in place.”
When he acquired Connect Health, Morrison says turnover was about $3.5–4 million, and about $4.3m in 2020. This year, he says it’s on track to reach $8.4m.
In practical terms, the new software replaces two discrete recruitment systems, and covers “the whole onboarding process, so you can see where everybody is at each stage of the recruitment process”, Morrison says.
From a shift management perspective, he says some are now “getting filled in seconds”.
“Then we’re getting back to clients within five-to-10 minutes, saying [jobs] are filled. It’s way more efficient.”
It also means consultants no longer spend time on the phones filling roles, leading to significant time and cost savings.
And the platform adds an additional layer of assurance for clients around infection control and vaccination compliance for nursing candidates, Morrison says.
“It really does stop a lot of non-compliance happening within the organisation, especially within the healthcare sector and aged care.”
The system alerts the company when a candidate’s flu vaccination needs to be updated, for example. And in the case of a disease outbreak in one facility, it won’t allow potentially infectious candidates to work in other facilities where there is no such outbreak.
“The reassurance with clients now that we’ve got this in place… has really made a big difference.”
In some cases, clients are even uploading shifts to the portal themselves, Morrison says. “We just have to push it out [and] they see it on their end when it’s been filled.”
“Some agencies don’t like their clients to see that,” he says but notes the gains are well worth it, because it allows his team to be working on more important things than posting jobs.
Looking ahead, the business is currently undergoing ISO certification for both OHS and environmental management, building on existing certifications ahead of the government tender for public hospitals opening again in 18 months, Morrison says.
“We will be the only nursing agency in WA that will have all these certifications.”
He is also looking to acquire one or two nursing agencies in Perth over the next couple of years, to boost market share.
