Case Study: Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust reduces vacancy and recruitment time with NHS Employers' Values Based Recruitment

Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust tests for values, attitudes and behaviours during recruitment

The customer, Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust, partnered with the vendor NHS Employers to address the challenge of recruiting healthcare assistants who aligned with the organization's core values. The trust needed an efficient process to assess candidates based on their attitudes and behaviours, rather than just skills, with a goal of hiring 100 full-time equivalent staff within three months.

NHS Employers implemented a values-based recruitment strategy that involved open days, value-focused interviews, and literacy/numeracy testing, all conducted without a dedicated budget. This solution resulted in the hiring of 124 staff, a significant reduction in attrition and sickness absence, and a two-thirds reduction in the time clinical managers spent on recruitment. The successful pilot, managed by NHS Employers, became the trust's standard hiring method for all new healthcare assistants.

Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust