Episode 20:
The Care Character Tool: Innovating Care Recruitment with Damien Wilkins
Richard is joined by Damien Wilkins, Customer Success Manager at Care Character.
In this episode, we’ll learn more about the Care Character Tool including the traits it assesses, why 7 is the magic number and how it promotes Values-Based Recruitment. We will also delve into why the turnover rate of care staff is three times higher than in any other sector, and the importance of giving applicants developmental feedback.
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Episode 20 – Transcript
Voiceover 0:00
Welcome to Psyched for Business, helping business leaders understand and apply cutting edge business psychology principles in the workplace.
Richard Anderson 0:13
Hi, and welcome to Psyched for Business. My name is Richard Anderson. In today’s episode, I’m joined by Damien Wilkins from Care Character. In the episode Damien shares a ton of knowledge about the care sector, what needs to change in order to ensure that the right stuff are recruited and retained in such vital roles. We also spend a lot of time talking about the Care Character psychometric tool, which has been built specifically for the care sector. I really love recording this podcast with Damien, he’s such a passionate man who genuinely cares about the work that he does. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did recording. Thanks again. So Damien Wilkins, welcome to Psyched for Business. Thank you for joining me, how’s things?
Damien Wilkins 0:52
Wonderful, very excited to be here. And thank you for having me on a this very cold day.
Richard Anderson 0:57
We were just we were just moaning about that. Before we started recording, I’ve got a I’ve got a gilet on, because on the second of July, it appears to be absolutely freezing outside. But don’t we just love it? British weather which I was on holiday,
Damien Wilkins 1:12
We love to have to have a complaint? Don’t we,
Richard Anderson 1:13
We do we do indeed. Brilliant. Okay. Well, that’s fantastic. I’m really, really appreciate you joining me, I think it’s fair to say that we’ve gotten to know each other probably quite well, certainly over the last probably three, maybe six months, six, maybe even a little bit longer than that. Since we’ve been working together. I think it’s fascinating what you guys are doing at Care Character. And I thought, Well, why not create a podcast and let’s get that rolled out to a few more people who are normal, be interested in the tool itself, what you’ve been up to why it’s been built, all of that sort of stuff. So I thought, well, let’s maybe do a little bit more of a deep dive around the Care Character concept and the tool that you’ve built from the original concept. But I thought, before we maybe get stuck into that particular part, if you’d be happy, maybe just to introduce yourself Damien. And just to give the listeners a little bit of background, kind of who you are and what you do.
Damien Wilkins 2:07
Yeah, absolutely. I think I wear many different hats, how to say the least. And my main priority is bringing Care Character to the sector’s attention. Because it’s it is a new innovative tool that doesn’t, hasn’t hasn’t existed historically, I’m ultimately client success manager. So I’m helping people get the most out of our product, and make sure it’s rolled out. And ultimately, the main thing is making sure people get better care at the end of the day by finding the right people in the beginning of the recruitment process.
Richard Anderson 2:36
Yeah, fantastic. So you mentioned that it hasn’t been around for a great deal of time. So how long has it been around Damien Care Character? And yeah, when was it? When was it originally built? Where did the idea come from? Yeah,
Damien Wilkins 2:48
So it’s a really nice story that goes behind it, actually. So I found out about a company called Cohesion Recruitments, some time ago for somebody that worked in the organization. And, you know, to get that little insight from somewhere in the side, this company is amazing. And at the time, I was a director for a care agency. And there’s a bit of a story that goes behind that. But I felt like a bit of a devil being the guy that was running an agency and I wanted to do the better part, of care. And the time came when it was right for me to change. And I managed to get a job as a business development manager at Cohesion. But I’m super passionate about what to do. And I’m more of these people who are looking for, like 1% gains in a process. You know, it’s not, it’s not about flipping something on its head and completely changing. It’s just some sometimes these little improvements and I was in this period of change coming out of COVID, where I think a lot of people saw business change, people change the way society seemed to change. So I was really on a bit of a crest of a wave with Cohesion, looking at different innovations of process. And that went from writing a job advert and the words you use and how many words you use and how you optimize the advert through to engagement and onboarding of people. So I spent quite a while doing that. But in the background, one of the things that attracted me to Cohesion is the two owners Will and Amanda are absolutely the hardest working CEOs I’ve ever known in my life. But certainly their their commitment to the care sector because they specialize in the care sector. It was above and beyond any, anything I’d ever seen from an organization. So they were trying to find ways to improve things for the sector. And one of the things that we understood was with such high turnover rates and the case that’s about three times higher than the rest of the UK. Something’s not quite right in the way and the type of people we’re attracting. So PhD study was done by Dr. John Barrett, and through wealth connections, more of our CEOs. He is a very good friend of Dr. Steven woods, who’s sorry Professor Steven Woods who’s leading world psychologist to get based on the Ph. D study based on recruitment and selection in the UK. The candidate assessments were designed is a way to effectively understand the people that you’re recruiting the recruitment process, either the right people that have the right values for a role in care. And it was born through Cohesion. And we’re no standalone company, which is absolutely amazing. Fantastic.
Richard Anderson 5:13
Well, it is. It’s tremendously innovative, what what you’ve been doing there for sure. And it’s interesting to hear a bit about the backstory, because you and I have never really kind of gone into that in in any detail. So that that is interesting. So you talked about the care sector? Was it? Did you say three times higher turnover than than any other industry in terms of staff? What were the or the principal? Or what are the principal reasons? Do you suspect for that? Is that is that based on values? Damien, would you say?
Damien Wilkins 5:40
This is the this is the thing, Richard, I am, I’m kind of on a mission, I have been for a few years to really champion values based recruitment. And I was in a webinar the other day, and I said, when I used to, you know, go back three years, and I’d be in a room of people doing a talk and say, can you put your hands up? Who does values based recruitment? And nobody put their hands up? Well, you might get somewhere, you know, very oh. Not too sure. If I should be putting my hand. Yeah. And then you say to people who recruit without experience, and you see a few hands go up and you go, Well, that’s exactly the same thing, you recruiting based on the value, not an experience. Now, when I go and do a talk, you should see the amount of hands that pop up with values based recruitments people are getting it, and most of the care but you know, personally, I’m championing that this is there’s, there’s a massive issue in this sector, as there is in lots of sectors at the moment. But I hate to say it so crudely, but if you boxes don’t get packed in a in a warehouse to get delivered, that’s not critical to someone’s day. But caring for people is absolutely critical. Absolutely. We can’t just think, Oh, we’ve got staff shortages, there’s an absolute complication that follows that. So you know, for me, the passion is that we can only attract more people to our sector, if there aren’t enough people with experience, and we need to find people with the values. So it’s been this ongoing campaign of this is how we’re going to solve this. And Cohesion has always been a values based recruitment company. So just to give you an idea around Cohesion, because quite, quite often word recruitment, and I think you just recruit people and try and effectively sell them to organizations, Cohesion, nothing like that, they will not take over a company’s recruitment process and run it for them. So if you’ve got the care provider and apply for a job, you think you’re dealing with that company, it’s actually Cohesion, giving you all that amazing process and engagement and touch points. So they’ve always championed values based recruitment. But what we then see is organizations can’t translate what they think they’re trying to achieve. So you’ll get a recruiter that goes, Yes, I’ll take anyone with experience and the right values. But then the manager of the service actually just wants someone with experience. So there’s, you know, there’s this breakdown in what’s actually going on in the world. So again, another reason why Care Character was created just to prove that you can take people in without experience to have the right values, and, ultimately, are just more suitable for holding care. And the great things which are, which is, you know, a lot of a lot of employers don’t really understand this is, when you use something like values based recruitment, it’s not just getting more people into organization, you actually find him better people more suited for a role. So people get cared for better, they turn up to work, they’re happier, they align better with things like compassion and empathy, funnily enough to have reduced levels of absenteeism. So, you know, it’s just, it’s just, it’s just this vein of the better way to do things. And there’s also a need and a requirement to do things that way, and Cohesion has been fully committed. And it’s been a joy to be part of that journey.
Richard Anderson 8:24
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s really, really interesting. And I have to say, from everything I know about Cohesion, which is a lot more these days than it was kind of six months ago, before we started working together with a fantastic company hugely passionate about values. I know about that. Let’s, let’s maybe take a step, step backwards. Just really quickly, Damien. So what I often do on on these kind of podcasts is probably ask a few silly questions. So I’m going to apologize in advance for that.
Damien Wilkins 8:24
But as long as you don’t mind silly answers, Richard.
Richard Anderson 8:55
I appreciate them, and I welcome them. So I think we’ve talked about values based recruitment. And obviously, you know, I’m very familiar with what you’re talking about, but just just to make no assumptions based on kind of who’s listening, what do we mean, specifically by values based recruitment? And why why is that? Why is that? I know, You’ve touched on it, but why is that kind of an important part of any recruitment process?
Damien Wilkins 9:20
So if you see, we do a lot of focus groups, obviously, what the kind of work we do, having psychometric assessments and delivering a product to people have to constantly engage what’s going on in the market, what are people saying? But we strip it right back. We know that when we do our focus groups that are good care service is driven by culture. We see this time and time again, if the managers got good culture, it just seems to work it seems, has to be led and driven like that. Now, if you haven’t already got that in place, then you probably find your retention rates quite quite low, and people coming in and out the service fail probations all these types of things. So when we started looking at the actual values of people coming into an organization, they’re the beginning foundations of building culture in the right way. Now, I think it’s dead easy to cover an assumption here that a lot of people would have that we’re probably only good for elderly care, or we’re only good for children. So we cover all different types of services, because the values of a person in care are very consistent and aligned. And we see this time after time after time. Yes, there are specialities you know, if you’re gonna look after children versus somebody at the end of life, you’re going to need slightly different skill sets that come along with those skill sets are consistent. And we’ve done a PhD study on these. It wasn’t, we didn’t sit in the pub one day think you know what? No, like, there’s a hell of a lot of validity going into these studies. And what we now start to see is, if you want to improve the culture in your organization, you can’t change the people that are there. You can’t just say to someone, can you just have a different culture on Monday, next week, please, it just doesn’t work like that. And you know, those people already in a culture that you obviously want to change. So the best way you can change culture is by injecting people with the right values and behaviors to support the culture, which supports a service, which supports the people. So you know, I know that sounds really simple right at the end, but it starts with the values. Now, I get to see lots of assessments come through. And we do some interesting dynamic datasets sometimes. And just because someone’s been in care for 10 years doesn’t mean that they’ve got all the right values and care, it could be that they’re the ones that are the ones that always pick up the shifts are the ones that always dealing with a difficult resident. So they appear to be a better carer and not saying that the people shouldn’t do that. But what we’re trying to find is consistent set of people that are consistently providing good quality care to people. And it starts with the values. Yes, and really, really want to stop there, please feel free to ask more questions, because I can just go on and on I’m so passionate about it.
Richard Anderson 11:50
I mean, you’ve put your your passions or, you know, it’s always been palpable, I’ve always kind of noticed that. And I think it’s a fantastic trait to have, I think, what really stood out about what you said there was, you know, it doesn’t matter at what stage you are caring for somebody, whether it’s kind of end of life care, whether it’s caring for young people, or whatever the values are principally principally the same. So and this is presumably across, across across the board Damien this is like, not just be a UK thing, this will be this will be a global thing when we talk about these types of values for anybody in the care sector.
Damien Wilkins 12:23
Yeah, I mean, we have to look at the you know, there may be different slight alignments in different parts of the world in our societies are different the way that people act, the way they see themselves in society. Now, this is different outputs and inputs, if you like, however, I would be very shocked if you went to a different country, and the values of care were significantly different. However, we don’t supply outside of the UK at the moment, that is something we would like to do in the future. Yeah, we’ve we’ve had a few conversations with some people in the States, for example, because we know they’re very closely aligned. However, the majority of our assessments are for people that are already in the UK for domestic recruitment, or people coming from other countries into the UK. So we are very much aligned with what the UK needs, as you know, as a set of care.
Richard Anderson 13:05
Brilliant. Yeah, yeah, that’s really interesting. So so let’s let’s dissect a little bit more around the values that obviously all of this academic research is gone into. And all of this validity we were talking about before, so why don’t you if you’re happy to maybe talk through, you know, a couple of the values or all of the values, if you want the you’ve you’ve established a really important in the care sector. And let’s, let’s do a bit more of a deep dive.
Damien Wilkins 13:29
I’ll give you the magic number Richard? Seven, we never meant for this to happen, okay. So just just to give, you have to share that assessment takes on average, seven minutes to complete. And there are seven traits, which I’ll tell you in a moment. And people that score seven or above are the ones that are offered for a role. So like seven is our magic to be that way. Yeah, but we have seven values that were identified in the PhD study, and, again, was doing a webinar the other day, trying to educate people that their values don’t generally look like the sets of values that appear on our assessments, but they always align, we do what’s called trait mapping. And we look at the values of a client versus the values of character, and you can consistently see alignment. So if someone’s, you know, they’re talking about inclusivity, and respect, the probably don’t use those particularly words of the use of phrase, but for most company values, and we see it consistently, they do align. So our values that were identified in the PhD study, and not in any particular order, some are way more important than others, but they’re all very important in every care setting. Something that’s massively important today, adaptable and resilient. Resilience is something that seems to be disappearing, by the truckload, and inclusivity and respect as well. We’d have to be we have to be inclusive in society. Naturally, compassion and empathy. Believe it or not, the trait that gets scored quite highly is procedural compliance. With then have dutifulness obviously, making sure you do what you’re supposed to be doing teamwork and working well together. But the one that always gets me is communication. Yeah, it’s such a defining trait when we’re talking about care. So, again, we’re talking about finding the right people for the sector. But then the sector is broken down into different kinds of settings, you know, you could be working in a care home, or you can go in and work in in somebody else’s home and everywhere in between. So we quite often find that communication is one of the lower lower scoring traits, because generally caring people aren’t boisterous and buoyant, and you know, going to work wanting to speak to everyone that come into care for people. So generally, you know, they’re not that comfortable, if you like starting new conversations or introducing themselves to people, caring people want to be cared for, funnily enough, yes. But quite often, you know, if somebody and this is the whole point about understanding how an assessment works, and the values based recruitment is the beginning of a much better processes, if you’ve if you’re interviewing someone, and you can see that they’re lower down the trait on communication, and probably not too comfortable having lots of new conversations, and probably shouldn’t be a domiciliary care worker going from one home to another and meeting new and different people. Yeah, on the road. So you found a good carer, but don’t put them in the wrong setting, because they’re not going to enjoy it and are going to leave the care sector, and we’re going to lose someone really valuable again. So let’s understand, do we have a different setting to put them in? If the answer’s no, well, then support them from day one. You say to them, I know you’re probably not comfortable having these conversations. So for the first week, you’re going to sit down with Damien, unfortunately, but he’s going to like all the introductions and take that, you know that that fear of anxiety away from you actually support you, rather than not realize what your situation is. And then in three months time, when you’re leaving us, we discover that you wasn’t, you know, one of those many things that adds up to why somebody would stay or leave. Yeah, it just identifying more about a person and allows you to support them better from day one. And again, I’m just going to say, and I’ll probably get you probably say Damien you said it 10 times now, a massive core theme here that caring people want to be cared for. So if you can find caring people, you bring them into your organization and you reciprocate that care back to them. It’s a massive trigger that people feel so much more valued. isn’t that surprising?
Richard Anderson 16:56
No. Well, yes. Isn’t it just, isn’t it? Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. It’s really, really interesting stuff. So I mean, when we talk and you’ve taught, obviously talked to through the values, and I bet you didn’t read them out, but you know them off the top of your head by now.
Damien Wilkins 17:11
Do you know what I always seems to forget dutifulness for some reason, which is really bad, because it’s dutifulness.
Richard Anderson 17:17
The irony? Excellent. So, so you talked as well. And what I find really, really interesting is, I know how much research in academia has gone into underpinning the tool and the validity side of things. I think it’s fantastic that you’ve managed to build it around the seven values and still managed to keep it short. And engaging your talk that it takes on average kind of seven minutes to, to complete. So, you know, obviously, I know the answer to this. But for the for the listeners, how has it been? How has it been built in the sense that you you get a number of questions, presumably, that sit within each value that people will sit as part of that recruitment process?
Damien Wilkins 18:07
I wouldn’t say it’s quite as you will certainly wouldn’t identify during the assessment like that what happens is, as a candidate is is quite surprising, because we we come from the recruitment world, we know that any part of the process that isn’t engaging is disengaging. So you’re either warming somebody up, or you’re cooling them down in the process. Yeah. So one of the biggest concerns that people always say to us is does this turn candidates off? Well, no, it actually enhances candidates. And I’m gonna go off on one again, here, but our clients are screened people out 30 to 40% of the candidates do not complete the assessment. But they’re the same candidates that wouldn’t engage with the new process anyway. But you spend a lot of time and resource trying to engage send an email sending texts, putting phone calls in. And what this actually does is you could candidates come straight to the front of the process to take the assessment, the demonstrating that they’re good at the role, the demonstrating they’ve got the right values, and you engage with them, and they engage with you. And it sounds super simple. But you’ve also got to remember that Cohesion is a bunch of amazing people in the recruitment world that get candidate engagement. Professor Steven Wood’s designed the assessment to be easy to read. Yeah, I have this issue around marketing that, you know, we provide psychometric assessments, the candidate assessments, and then we know that sometimes people are going, but do I need to be trained to use the not at all the super simple to use. One report just goes to the candidate, you know, that’s going to a load of people that applying for jobs has to be dead simple and easy to use. Recruiters have a lot to do, and giving them something extra to do that is of no value, absolutely not going to be taken well, so it has to have value in it. And one of the biggest things we always get feedback is your reports are so easy to use and to understand, but it shouldn’t be it’s not we’re not going to create rocket science here. We’re trying to create an additional tool that helps you make better hiring decisions in your process.
Richard Anderson 19:49
Yeah no, I mean, it’s a really really good point because I think that you know, some of the, of course, you know, depending on the use case, there is obviously need and requirement in certain industries for certain use cases to have really lengthy reports that you need to have qualifications in or certifications in in order to administer. But I completely hear you on that one. And, you know, I remember when we started, Evolve up, and a lot of a lot of the pushback that we had when we were trying to sell well, in our case assessment technology. But in general, it was concerns of recruiters not wanting to put another another hurdle in place, as you’ve just said, and I think if you can make sure that it’s engaging, but your argument, there’s a really good one in the sense that if people can’t be bothered to sit a seven minutes assessment, are they really going to be the right the right person for for this particular role? So that’s really, really interesting. So in terms of the reports been easy to digest, I know that you’ve developed because I’ve been fairly close to the project. Of course, I know that you’ve developed a number of different reports for different applications, if you like, Would you mind just talking through those in a little little more detail, Damien, so essentially, what what your clients or your partners that you work with, who use the Care Character tool, what they get in terms of report and how they are typically used?
Damien Wilkins 21:09
Yeah so the moment the only live product we’ve got this is for frontline care stuff. But what we are currently working on and again, there’s a lot of validity goes into these things, and we’re gonna flip them around in a month or two. Now, of course, the current project we work on is the registered managers assessment, because we also understand that one of the biggest factors that can be changed is new starters, having meaningful and valuable conversations with the manager in the first four to eight weeks, which we would all think was pretty standard in any job anywhere your role, but managers are very stretched. And I don’t always have the time to do that. So creating the kinds of assessments super good to get people into business. But if the managers aren’t doing the right things with those new starters, then it’s not going to be as effective as you’d like it to be. So the next thing we’re working on is the managers assessment. So we’ve been holding focus groups for that recently. We’re hoping to release that in the next few months. So that’s the next one. And we’ve now been asked for assessments such as for nurses, and for senior management within organizations. So what’s the what this is starting to, you know, our clients are basically saying this is working really well here. But it hasn’t solved with the recruitment areas, because it is not applicable there. So these are the new tools that we’re starting to develop for the sector, we do have a few clients that use our assessments across the board for recruitment, whether it’s a senior manager coming to the organization, or it could be someone in the kitchen staff, it could be somebody in housekeeping, because the way this organization sees is you’re in a care company, we want you to be a caring person, and you probably still will interact some way with residents. So they don’t use it necessarily to say, Have you got the skills for the job, but do you align with the values that we need as an organization, so it is still quite dynamic on that basis. But we want to be nice to think that if we give you a tool, you want to get something super valuable out of it, benefit your organizations. But what we found really interesting during the focus groups, I think is interesting for people to hear is when somebody new comes into a business in most roles, whether that’s entry level or senior level, as you get on boarded into the organization, there’s a whole podcast around on boarding. But, you know, you assume that the company is your business, and you need to get more support that you need. Obviously, having assessments helps you to identify what support the need even. But what the big thing that consistently came up is people get promoted from a role into managers roles, with the assumption that we’re going to be, okay. And the, if you like, the onboarding disappears, because it’s obviously it’s been promoted, you can do the job. So people are promoting. So you end up with accidental managers, people eventually going to roll just because they were good at the previous role. And they may be good for the role. But if they haven’t been given that support early on it, and then you’re kind of setting them up for failure, and they get in assessments just help you to understand what’s going on with your person, what strengths in areas of development that support them. That’s what they’re there for setting people up for success.
Richard Anderson 24:03
Yeah it is. And I’ve seen that sort of thing happen, almost the world over and one of the specific examples, it’s outside of the care sector. But the reason I’m mentioning this is because it just struck a chord in my brain, it’s when, you know, when you’ve got that fantastic top performer in the sales team that does, you know, brilliantly every single month, and eventually they become the sales manager never had any experience brilliant salesperson, potentially an awful sales manager, because not probably because they haven’t got the chip because they haven’t had that level of support. And just assume because somebody’s doing, you know, however much per quarter on top of the you know, on top of target, then they’re going to be a great manager is not always the case. So when you’re talking about that in the care sector, it’s 100%. resonates, it’s interesting that it obviously occurs occurs there there to one of the things I’m interested in and I don’t know whether you’ve got an answer to this to me, but I’ll ask it anywhay. And have you seen anything in terms of trends because presumably you’re had a number of completions of the Care Character tool now? Well, I know you have. Have you done any kind of analysis? Or is that something that’s to come around? You know, what, are there any typical trends where, you know, a lot of people seem to do better on certain values than others, there’s maybe value values gaps in expression for those sorts of things. Have you ever done any looking at that type of thing just yet? Do we need to get better at certain things, as you know, as people within the care sector?
Damien Wilkins 25:30
Yes, one of the, you know, the ultimate thing that we’re trying to achieve here is people turn up to do role in care and do the job better and stay in organizations longer. That’s the ultimate thing that we’re trying to achieve. Yeah, for us, one of our difficulties is getting retention data, because companies don’t really want to share retention data, especially when it’s as bad as it is. Now company, no company is going to turn around and go, Oh, our turnover is X, Y, and Z and then and then and then tell you that they’ve got a 5% improvement, but it’s still only at 25%. So it’s very difficult to collect that data. So one of the projects that we’re we’re actually currently in the process of reaching out to some clients at the moment to do a project where we’re actually stitching in the whole process with our exit retention, and the K character assessments. So you get to see the fuller, bigger dataset as well. One of the things that we do see is, if you’ve got a service, for example, in looking after children services with challenging behavior, you know, the thing that people are looking for there is being adaptable and resilient. Absolutely. Time and time again. And I think I’ve touched on this earlier that, you know, resilience and adaptability in society seems to be dwindling away. So you know, when we’re dealing with very challenging circumstances, and people need lots of support, it’s very good to identify these things that are beginning of a process, again, for palliative care, compassion, and empathy is very high on the scale, I think, to answer your question is people make better decisions, and they don’t always identify the great result. But what they do see is less bad results. So, you know, we, we employed someone and we sat in a room with somebody in the you know, the last moments of the life and then that take a week off work, because they were struggling mentally as well. Well, have you put the person in the right set into to support them that, you know, it’s all about these making better decisions to get rid of less bad decisions effectively.
Richard Anderson 27:22
So just to go back to one of the things that you mentioned before Damien that really resonated with me, and obviously I said it at the time was was trying to educate people that you’re not putting another unnecessary step in the recruitment process that this is adding a huge amount of value. And obviously, I know that you’ve been doing a really good job on that with some of the new clients that you’ve brought on board and, and all that sort of stuff. But from those people who have been using the Care Character tool, today, what sort of what sort of general feedback are you? Are you are you getting? And because obviously, it is, although you’re not putting another step or an unnecessary hurdle in the recruitment process, it’s going to be different for them if they’ve not been assessing before for value. So what How’s how’s it going down in general?
Damien Wilkins 28:07
It’s an it’s really strange that sometimes the feedback you get is not what you expect, and it’s really negative, that’s actually really positive. So yeah, because it’s quite a dynamic to it, you know, in its most basic form, it’s, it’s people take an assessment in your recruitment process, score, the right score, and above, you’re going to engage with them. But what it actually does is, is gives a massive efficiency in the recruitment process, because, you know, when this clickbait world, where, I don’t know, I’m going to give it away a little bit here, but I remember when I applied for jobs, I used to have to write a cover letter. I’d write it you know, my application would go in in first chapter and verse what color socks we wearing last week? Absolutely everything. Now, it’s, you know, you’re signing up on Indeed, you can look at a job, which I’ll click on, apply for a job, click apply for another job. And there’s a massive danger that comes with that. And I think we’re all seeing that. And at the moment, lots of companies are seeing really high application numbers, because it is so accessible. And the problem is, if you don’t click click, click on jobs. And then the first thing you get sent is an application form to fill out, or you’re not going to engage at all, absolutely disengaged straightaway. So, you know, the whole idea is what, what’s in it for the candidate. We do all these wonderful things about these processes. We have applicant tracking systems, we have different ways of engaging different communications. What was the candidate actually getting out of it? And I don’t think quite often people look at it from the other side. They think, all we know people love to read this, what do they know and actually read it and they won’t give you any feedback. They didn’t really engage in anything better. Well, we’ll put another there’s so much investment of understanding what’s going on in the world that I think a lot of people miss. So for us, one of the biggest things we give the candidate a report back so the candidate gets a chance to reflect on their suit ability firstly, and prepare for the interview. So you’re actually giving them something. I know that sounds really bad. But most recruitment processes are just giving you hoops to jump through, and nuggets of information that you probably don’t really care about, then all of a sudden you do this assessment, and you’ve got, I’ve got something about myself, yeah, candidates are kind of going, I never knew that about myself, or I didn’t realize that there was a value that was you know, around inclusivity, and respect, but now we can see it and read it and reflect on it, I can now do something about it. So you get this self fulfilling prophecy of improvements? And then me and you’d be terrible to each other, like, what have you scored on communications? If you’ve got this, right, I’m having a seven. So you know, there’s this kind of thing that happens in the workplace. But what what some of our customers do is, you know, the, the one I love the most is we recruited someone that we would never have recruited before, because the application form or give us experience, they hadn’t got any. And now we’ve just employed an amazing worker. And we’ve got great feedback about them that would never have got this job with
Richard Anderson 30:56
Yeah, without without the assessment.
Damien Wilkins 30:57
I love reducing bias, we’re looking at numbers, we’re not looking at a CV, we’re not looking at experience, I’m looking at a number and assessment and starting with decision making on did they align well enough with their values. So seeing those kinds of things, I think is so powerful, but one of the reports that we create is the actual development report. So we know that it sounds really bad, but it’s actually good that you new starters in care generally want personalized learning and development above and beyond what we call manager training in the sector, which another training you have to do. They also want to train themselves personally, and this isn’t necessary to be promoted. Sometimes people want to become just better carers or specialists for, for example, dementia. So what we what we’re actually doing at the beginning of this onboarding process, give a report that still based on that initial seven minute assessment. And still based on those seven traits goes, here’s a learning and development plan based around these particular traits, which is based on using individual. And it gets the managers to sit down at weeks, four weeks, eight trigger points that candidates want. caring people want to be cared for, it’s just showing that demonstration of this is the organization values, here’s our culture, funnily enough, we’re going round in circles. It allows you to plug say, also onboard people better and give them the support from day one. So this is my point, when we you know, we get things where people go, we improve proficiency at 30% of the front end of the process, and we’ve got reduce failed probations. That’s all great. But for me, the magic is when we see these other benefits that come out of a recruiting, somebody’s never recruited No, got a career in care that’s going to go home. And God, you know what, this is amazing. I love the sector and start promoting assets to other people, because they had a great experience.
Richard Anderson 32:36
Yeah, for sure. I couldn’t agree with that more, I think that’s, that’s a really vital part of the process is recruiting somebody who would have never got a job historically, because the process was different processes changing significantly, you know, across the recruitment space of that of that, I’m sure. But what I really love it, as well as the fact that you know, the making huge differences to organizations is, is the path for the candidate to so you talked about getting the report, we’ve all sat psychometrics in the past, where you press submit, and then your results go into the abyss, you might never hear from the business again, you don’t know how you’ve performed or anything. And it’s just not a nice process for the candidate. It’s disengaging, it’s all that sort of stuff. And I think, you know, when you when you see your report, and it really resonates, there’s nothing better than that. Because even if you’re not to get the job, then you’ve got something tangible you’ve got so Oh, actually this organization implemented this part of the process. And it you know, I’ve come out with their thing, and well, actually, they’re a great organization, they’ve given me they’ve given me this. So I think after winning, so
Damien Wilkins 33:36
Sorry just to interrupt it’s just like, it’s where do you go for, I don’t know, let’s just say and anyone that’s listening now decides not want to go and try something different in my career, Grant, go for it scary as that is. But let’s say you wasn’t successful, is that you don’t then, you know, if I want to become a chef, let’s say I’m definitely not going to become a chef. That right. But let’s say I wanted to become a chef. And I don’t get the job, what I just go hungry, I didn’t get the job. If someone gave me a report going, you didn’t get the job. We don’t say you didn’t get the job. Obviously, these are the areas where you need to improve. I want to become a chef, I can go away and try and improve myself. Yeah. Without that. It’s just it wasn’t engineers. It’s just what was the benefit young people something but you know, we’re in the care sector, we should be showing ourselves as caring anyway. So give me a little bit about where we want more people to come into the sector. So if someone wasn’t quite right for us now. Let them try and work on that and then come back and get a job and be great at being cared we want that was people Yeah.
Richard Anderson 34:33
No Damien, you go off on one as much as much as you like, that’s not a problem at all. No, but you’re absolutely you’re absolutely right in what you’re saying. So, obviously, you mentioned right at the beginning the weather but your big part of your job is eulogizing, of course about Care Character, but about kind of what’s gone into Care Character and what it’s for and solving problems for people now. Do you suspect that over the next I don’t know, let’s say a year, two years, five years, whatever it might be that there’s going to be a lot more values based recruitment within the care sector, because obviously, from what you’re telling me that that’s the bit that seems to work for. For most most organizations within recruitment, do you think we’re going to see more of that across the board, whether that’s using Care Character, and hopefully the majority of people by that point will be but, you know, just in general, do you think that’s going to formulate part, you know, big part of the process?
Damien Wilkins 35:28
There is? I don’t know the other answer. If we don’t do it, Richard. I’m not going to start squirting statistics out. But we’re, you know, there are hundreds of 1000s of jobs needed to be filled in the sector. The scary news is less people are receiving care now than there was five or six years ago, which most people can’t even get the head around. The only way that we can support the growth of the sector is by getting more people into the sector that don’t have experience. Yeah, you know, for me, that just encompasses values based recruitment. Now, I do have scary moments when I speak to companies and scares the living daylights out of me when someone goes, if they can walk and talk, I’ll take them. Oh, my God, whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t use our assessments, then because they’re not going to help you.
Richard Anderson 36:18
It’s worrying that and alarming.
Damien Wilkins 36:20
But what you also get there is you get panic recruiting. And we’ve, we’ve gained from our focus groups to get real, you know, if you’re sat down in a room and have the conversation, you probably come to the same assumption anyway. But when you hear it resonating is how do people today make a decision in the recruitment process? We just call it the mum question, which of these personnel can have to your mum, the person you’re interviewing now? And if in your head, you’re thinking, Yeah, I’d have you look after my mum. And that’s kind of your decision based on other things, safeguarding relevant things. But ultimately, how am I making this decision, and it comes down to gut feeling of gut instinct. And then we have the discussion molecule 10 of the best recruiters in the world, whichever sector it is, and you gave them the same profile, the same job to fill, the company will have slightly different gut reactions and instincts as to the person that they’re interviewing. So what are we actually doing in the care sector of recruiting, we kind of make taking massive guesses and gains. And I’ve been recruiting the sector for many years, no one’s ever come and actually worked out how good I am at recruiting the right people, they’ll just go, we need this many people this month. So we give him a gauge a tool. And it might be a really bad analogy. But if you’re driving down the road, in your car, you’ve got a speed or you probably don’t speed, because you’ve got a gauge, you can keep looking at it and just checking decision, you take that speedo the way, it’s a very risky journey you’re about, you’re probably not going to break the speed limit because you’re aware of your decision. But you need a gauge to help you go when making the right decisions. But then you take it a step further on Chrome and what your question was, which because again, I’m going off.
Richard Anderson 37:54
It’s essentially just talking about the kind of the future of the care sector and recruitment, generally, they mean, but you’re not going off on.
Damien Wilkins 38:02
So the point is, we’ve got to find more people. Absolutely. Now, I am just going to champion the assessments here a bit because my if I got to the end of my days, and I’ve got to achieve one thing this would be it could be doing could UK campaign across the UK. And the government just said, you can jump on a website, you can take an assessment. And if you score whatever the score is, in this instance, as a seven, that then you know, you’re suitable for a role in care highly suitable for rolling care how many people out there out there that might go, Oh, I didn’t realize I could do that job. And all of a sudden, we’ve got loads more people applying for roles in our sector because they realize that they can be good carers, think about all the mums that have cared all their life and their families are the best people we could ever want to come to the care sector. But they might not realize that they’re actually really good carriers. So how, you know, we really need to promote more to children in schools that this is a sector. And there are brilliant opportunities to develop yourself as an individual professionally, personally, you’re making a difference to people’s lives. But you know, the Science, Tech, manufacturing industries, they’re the ones out there out there promoting their sector for being wonderful. We’ve got a massive job ahead of us, we need to work together as a sector. It’s such a big job for us to do it there. And you know, these tools just help you get it. right first time really,
Richard Anderson 39:27
I’ve got no question that that’s the case. And I have to say, Damian, as well as a little compliment here, but I’ve never heard somebody speak so passionately. I think I think every about of these still so I mean, but you know, it’s clear how passionate you are. It’s clear that it’s making a difference. And it’s, you know, it’s clear that you know, we need to get as many people using this as we as we possibly can always obviously, that’s a big part of your job, of course.
Damien Wilkins 39:53
Let’s just touch on that. I think it’s really important to understand, oh this guy is passionate You know, or is it fake? Or is it whatever, there’s a reason why I’m passionate. And I’m not going to go off on this one. But I was in foster care for 15 years of my life, and it wasn’t a great time. Then, I’m lucky, I met my wife that I’ve been with for 20 years. Otherwise, I don’t know what would happen to me, but she could put me on the straight and narrow. And unfortunately, her mom became very ill, and then ended up having her leg amputated. And we basically turned our front room into like a hospital room, and some of the care that I personally experienced. And I witnessed my mother in law experiencing acceptable to the overwhelmingly sick to my stomach about what was happening with the care sector, very much disenfranchised. So unfortunately, my mom passed away, let’s a time came around. We’re like, what, what we’re doing myself my career Well, someone that used to work for me reached out and said, Why don’t you want to work for my agency? And I went, I absolutely am done with the care sector. And what I’ve seen, and they’ve got me didn’t know they couldn’t make a difference. And, and it was like, you’ve got you’ve absolutely, you’ve just done me. Yeah, they used to sell for me, so obviously did a good job in training, it seemed to me. And so I went to work for the agency and ended up running the agency by the time I left. And the most amazing thing I saw happen, and we have many success stories. But I live in Lincolnshire, it’s a very rural county. So we have the added problem that you do have to drive because there’s nowhere that’s transportable by bus routes. So there’s an added issue in the whole recruitment process that even if you have got people that want to do the job, you’ve also got to be able to drive, you got to be able to cover shifts in different locations. So it was a huge challenge. And one of the things that we were doing was creating carers. And the council kind of helped with this a little bit because we did an induction to care program. So we’d bring people in values based recruitment, people that want to do care, but have no experience. And then we train them for two to three weeks with a fully registered nurse that will do the training, given the care certificate, and then send them out. Now we made a huge mistake. When we first started doing this, trying to be an honest business, you say to people, these guys have got no experience. So can you make sure you support them in the first few days? I can totally understand like a care company going, I don’t want someone with that experience. But then we used to get really good feedback. Yeah. So then eventually, the time came when you’d stop saying there were new people, and you just get great feedback, because we were molding people to be the carriers that we wanted them to be. So that began, my passion began there when I’m watching, hate someone and turn them into someone amazing. And then someone’s care improves, and all of a sudden revenue, happier into the day in the life has changed for the better. And it all started with finding the right people. So every day I wake up, I’m on this mission to have seen or felt it have achieved it. And I want everyone else to have a piece of that as well. Yeah. So that’s why the passion is there. Because I’ve seen the difference it makes.
Richard Anderson 42:51
Well that’s it you’ve had you’ve had your personal experience that you’ve talked through, you’ve seen the difference it makes for other people. So I think it’s it’s absolutely fantastic. What you’re doing Damien genuinely is, but I want to give you the opportunity, just just to kind of wrap up the podcast just to give anybody I don’t know how you want to do it, if you want us to, to kind of link your LinkedIn profile, maybe as part of the blog. This goes on, but if anybody is interested in how do they, how do they get in touch with you to talk in more detail about Care Character?
Damien Wilkins 43:20
Well I think first and foremost, we’re here to talk, recruitment, anything we can do to help people have a better day recruiting my people anyway, you don’t have to buy our products, you know, we want to help the sector anyway. But you know, it’s a waste what I’m saying if anyone’s a virtual cup of tea, talk about values, talk about onboarding, talk about writing adverts, more than happy to do that. But it’s dead simple with that. Our systems are dead easy to utilize. They’re not complicated, happy to give people pilots and free credits to trial. You know, don’t don’t take our word for it, try it for yourselves. See how it works. In reality, our website is www.carecharacter.com . You can go on there, you can book a demo, if you want. You can drop me an email. I’m damien.wilkins@carecharacter.com . Feel free to reach out. Our team are here to make your life easier at the end of the day. So even if your recruitment’s going great, I can probably I’ll be getting it a little bit better. So reach out, there’s nothing to lose.
Richard Anderson 44:13
Fantastic. Well, well, like I say, yeah, we’ll put all those links that you talked through and your email address as part of the blog post that this sits on Damien and I suspect it will be next week, which will be the kind of week beginning ninth, I think or eighth of July, this will go out. Yes, let’s Yeah, let’s hope so. But listen, I really, really appreciate you making the time I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, as I always do when we get together and chat. But obviously we’ve never done it in this type of arena before but it was really interesting because I’ve learned a huge amount over the last kind of 40 minutes or so. thanks for making the time Damien and yeah, really appreciate it.
Damien Wilkins 44:52
Thanks for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
Voiceover 44:55
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