No single feature alone was able to reduce time to staff by more than a few weeks, although the cumulative effect of the interventions reduced time to staff by more than 85 days. Behavioural nudges throughout were mission critical to reducing time to staff, and were most effective in producing results when the language used on the platform (clarity and nudges), the structural design of the process, and the interactions between users were aligned together to produce a specific result.
The introduction of the applicant tracking system improved the staffing experiences for managers, but only reduced the time to staff by an estimated 3-4 weeks at most. Time savings with an applicant tracking system are not expected to be greater than this unless screening of applicants can be done in real time (as applications arrive), processes include targeted application volumes, and assessment plans are in place prior to applications being received.
The platform interventions that successfully reduced time to staff were tested with a wide range of departmental mandates, cultures and types of jobs. They were also tested with both seasoned and new managers who hadn’t staffed before. This indicates that these interventions could potentially be widely applied to reduce time to staff more broadly in GC hiring practices.
No matter how much we were able to reduce time to staff, it was never fast enough for managers. This led us to wonder, maybe the whole model needs a rethink. We’ve come to the conclusion as a team that we think the future of staffing is in a single, massive interoperable repository of talent, equipped with the capacity to use portable digital verifiable credentials. We still believe the heavily local, five factor matching model will be essential to a strong hire, but we think the path managers will take to get to those applicants will look a lot different in the future, as the full potential of digital platforms is realized. We think this will be a lot faster and maybe, just maybe, fast enough and process light enough for busy managers to find it easy and effective.
