The temporary healthcare recruitment sector is highly regulated, with rigorous compliance and training processes. Agencies are required by law to verify healthcare professionals fitness to work and maintain their compliance status throughout their employment. Achieving this, without the appropriate digital solutions, is very costly and often inefficient, but also results to a frustrating user experience. Professionals can wait for weeks to become fully compliant and be ready to work for the NHS while shifts go unfilled. This leads to loss of revenue and compromises patient care.

This was a very complex project in an industry that I had never worked in but I was determined to resolve problems and create opportunities for growth. My approach can be summarised as below:

I dedicated time to observe and interview staff from sales, compliance and support teams to understand how to improve CX. I obtained a strong insight of business processes and operational obstacles.

Key findings

Based on all findings of the analysis, from a business perspective, any digital solution will have value if it achieves the below

• Increase candidate attraction with priority to those with availability in the next 3-6 months.
• Obtain core compliance documents as early as possible (in order to verify and start the compliance process)
• Generate opportunities for growth
• Distribute jobs and generate interest in specific specialities / regions

I sought out to gather more information about the market. I started with secondary research to gain a better insight into the industry. I read a lot of articles and case studies from leading publications. I also accessed statistics from Office of National Statistics related to the healthcare industry. Then I conducted primary research. I made use of the Freedom of Information Act and wrote to over 100 NHS Trusts to obtain information such as: which agencies they are using, how much they supply, what are the actual number of healthcare professionals from agencies hired by the hospital and more. Conducted competitive analysis against the top 5 direct competitors. I analysed their offering; how they sell their service, and digital infrastructure; how they manage and deliver their service. I went even further and reviewed their financial accounts for the last 5 years to understand more about their profitability and compare figures.

Key findings

After business analysis and market research it was time to focus on the user with the aim to understand more about their current experience, what works or doesn’t and how they envision the ideal service. After consideration I decided that qualitative research would give us a greater insight.

• Set up interviews with healthcare professionals that have been working with more than one agency. Through this process I also established some key user personas.
• Provided the compliance staff with a questionnaire to fill in during the mandatory face to face meeting and in that way I gained another 30-40 within a month
• Attended industry events and open days for healthcare professionals which allowed me to have more interviews and verify the information that we gathered so far.

Key findings

After I gathered all necessary information and defined problems and opportunities, I set out the key goals and areas of focus. Most importantly, I had to make a plan and present to senior management for consideration. I knew very well that the plan would have to be realistic and gain the support of senior management.

Short term goals

During the first three months the main goal was to develop a solution that would immediately address some of the business requirements and take into consideration of the findings that we made through user research. The most realistic option was to go with the features below, which I believed they would make a great impact, as they did. I split goals into short and medium term but no long term. I was in a six month contract and delivering on set objectives.

Product features

Submit availability / Online calendar

This feature would allow candidates to regularly update their availability online and be matched with open opportunities. It would also allow the business to re-engage with thousands of passive candidates. This feature could also be used a lot in attracting new candidates

On boarding process and candidate scoring

A new online multi-step on boarding process that would gather all candidate information and would provide a score based on their choices. This would allow the teams to know which candidates are most likely to be profitable and decide whether to start compliance process, which was a costly process. The scoring system could be updated based on what candidates are important to the business at any given time.

Documents uploading

A simple but very effective way to assist sales and compliance teams in obtaining core documentation. There were in fact more than 20 documents one would have to submit and whereas some of them could wait, the core documents were vital in assessing a candidates likelihood of being placed in the NHS.

Job posting and distribution

Publish, distribute and match jobs with candidates in areas of growth. Technically, it was impossible to publish all available opportunities from 300 NHS Trusts and many other healthcare organisation. Of course everything is possible but it would be out of scope for me at the time. Instead I focused on publishing the opportunities that were in areas with a lot of candidate availability.

Medium term goals (3-9 months)

Develop and deploy

At the time, I was solely responsible for UX design, and manage two developers. It took us roughly 5-6 weeks to have solution ready to test. I sat down with users to test and get immediate feedback. After analysing and applying feedback we were almost ready to ship the first version. Almost… now all we had to make sure, was that all company staff are trained and ready to take advantage of the new customer experience that we are providing. This was vital, because getting this right, would guarantee further investment, and customer experience would become one of the main principles. Getting this wrong, would most certainly make this scenario unlikely.

Analyse and optimise web product

I would review and analyse online behaviour on a weekly basis and apply or schedule optimisations with the team. Having actual user data allow us to learn more and improve the user experience. The result was more online engagement and interactions.

Review internal technical challenges

Although every department used a system to manage their workflow and processes, these systems offered no integration or a sufficient API. There was not effective use of customer data and it was a challenge to offer a customer centric experience. Many of these systems would have to be replaced to ensure meaningful and rewarding use of user data.

Assess response and ROI

Response and ROI was monitored and reported on a weekly and monthly basis together with forecasting and estimated growth. Within a very short amount of time the product had achieve great success.

Key Achievements

After the successful completion of my contract I was offered to join the management team and build on the work that we had already done. I was promoted to board director and made responsible for leading both product management and marketing teams. I was given more responsibilities but in practise there were four areas of focus.

• Improve CX through digital solutions that’s more efficient and reliable.
• Reduce the cost per user and speed up on-boarding and compliance process.
• Increase attraction and retention of users.
• Use data and analysis to create growth opportunities

After extensive business analysis and having empathised very well with the end user through research I set out to define a solution that would address everyones needs. I focused on designing a user experience that would offer competitive advantage and provide everything a healthcare professional would need to work with an agency.

Product features

Visibility of all NHS jobs

This would allow users to search, view and apply to any available opportunity. It would also allow the system to match opportunities with available candidates.

Online Compliance

One of the most challenging issues was online compliance and thats because there were a lot of regulatory requirements and technical obstacles. Getting a candidate compliant online through a web or mobile application would require us to develop a series of products.

• core documentation uploader
• health questionnaires and other forms to be filled and signed
• an on-boarding process that would assist users with all requirements
• a learning management system for mandatory training that can certify users and produce certificates
• a legally binding online digital signature tool that can verify users identity

Availability Calendar

An enhanced availability calendar that would work very well in combination with published jobs and suggest opportunities based on users available dates. This would allow the system to naturally generate interest and revenue opportunity.

Booking Confirmations

Provide booking information from hospital to accommodation details and stop relying on PDF confirmations. This would improve the customer experience but also reduce errors and require less time to do.

Payments

Providing payment details would improve customer experience and address one common candidate query; “When am I getting paid?”.

Timesheets

Receiving timesheets on time was a major business issue to address. Agencies are getting paid by the NHS once they receive a time sheet and when a large amount of timesheets is missing, it creates a cashflow issue for the business. The feature would remind candidates to submit timesheet after each assignment and would make use of the camera to scan and send directly to the accounts department. There were of course many technical considerations to be made. Many company systems would have to be upgraded or replaced to allow an integration with front-end environments that would make all these features possible. The whole company would have to go through a digital transformation phase and that required a lot of resources to ensure success.

With the product features defined, I set to grow the product and development teams. I still remained responsible for product design although at this stage I was the head of product and in a very strategic position within the organisation. My approach was to design all user journeys on web and showcase to end users to gather feedback and make optimisations. I followed this process by going back to the user several times to test, but also test internally with department heads and staff. Once we ensured that we had the right product and every user journey was approved, I designed the responsive experience and native iPhone and Android apps. Last, I went back to the user. I arranged interviews and showcased the solution in open days and events so we got to see the reactions and impressions of our target audience.

The development and engineering teams were off shore and in order to lead the project and team effectively I deployed JIRA. I was responsible for creating the product backlog and ensuring all tickets are addressed. I was also responsible for running the daily scrums, sprints and retrospective meetings. I decided the best way forward was to focus on the web platform and at the same time spec and develop a sufficient API that would allow us to deliver native mobile apps. In terms of testing, I created a group of test users that would take part in alpha versions of the product. This allowed us to obtain feedback quick and fix errors fast. Additionally, I would schedule a beta version where I would invited a small percentage of users. This gave us a last minute chance make improvements before we go public. The launch of the product required a lot of company wide preparation to ensure the customer experience doesn’t suffer. All departments had clear guidelines and process flows on how to make use and take advantage of the new platform.

There was a constant process of optimisation. The more users and activity generated the more we learned about how to improve the platform. Google analytics and MixPanel were used to track and analyse user behaviour online and mobile. Due to the nature of the business, compliance requirements would be updated on a regular basis so we had to keep providing updates as per NHS guidelines.

Workflo utilises its effortless user experience to change the way that healthcare professionals work. If we were to describe what Workflo is / does to a temporary healthcare recruitment business, the four points below would be a good start.