The University Hospital of Geneva employs over 10,000 staff at multiple locations in and around Geneva. It is a teaching hospital and its Faculty of Medicine offers professional training for doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals. Clinical research is also an integral part of the hospital and the research team works closely with the Faculty of Medicine.
University Hospital of Geneva
The University Hospital of Geneva is one of the largest hospital groups in Switzerland. Employing over 10,000 staff at multiple locations in and around Geneva, it provides a wide variety of health care services to patients each year. It is a teaching hospital and its Faculty of Medicine offers professional training for doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals.
Clinical research is also an integral part of The University Hospital of Geneva and the research team works closely with the Faculty of Medicine.
Challenges
The University Hospital of Geneva is a large and diverse organisation, with over 250 different job roles employed across all levels in multiple locations. With such a wide variety of roles to recruit, the Human Resources Managers support 12 internal departments and handle over 10,000 applications each year.
Prior to implementing an e-recruitment solution traditional paper-based methods of processing were used, with telephone and email the primary communication tools, both internally and with candidates.
The large volumes of applicants being processed meant there was a significant time delay between internal departments and hiring managers and as a consequence, many candidates were being lost in the process. With an unacceptable candidate response time, the team was very aware that its administrative processes were too time consuming without adding value to internal clients and prospective candidates.
In addition, the manual system was unable to supply any meaningful statistics or reporting capability.
With candidate numbers growing each year, the HR team knew that they needed to implement an online recruitment system to better manage this increase and to offer candidates an improved recruitment process experience with easier and more efficient communication.
Valérie Mégevand, Human Resources Director said:
“We were looking to facilitate transparency and create clear communication throughout the recruitment process not just within the HR team, but also with our 400 hiring managers and our candidates. We wanted all candidates that applied to The University Hospital of Geneva to have a positive experience from the initial application to a job offer. Communication needed to be clear and concise and within an acceptable timeframe hence our decision to implement an e-recruitment solution.”
Solution
The University Hospital of Geneva works closely with CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, who had successfully implemented Hireserve ATS, Hireserve’s e-recruitment solution in 2003. Following this initial recommendation and endorsement of Hireserve ATS by the CERN recruitment and IT teams, as well as having reviewed other recruitment system capabilities, The University Hospital of Geneva decided that Hireserve ATS was the best e-recruitment solution for their requirements and chose to work with the Hireserve team welcoming their ability and flexible functionality of Hireserve ATS to provide solutions for their particular needs.
Most customers implement Hireserve ATS on a Software as a Service (SaaS) model but some, including The University Hospital of Geneva require an e-recruitment solution they can host themselves.
The implementation required a skilled and experienced team and was project-managed by the University’s IT and HR departments.
“Hireserve has been extremely flexible and supportive and really listened to our needs.”
Jeremy Ovenden, Hireserve’s Managing Director said:
“With the majority of our customers we tend to work with members of the HR team only but with the University we also have a close working relationship with the IT team.
The complexities of a customer hosting Hireserve ATS themselves means we need to establish a very good relationship with both departments and despite the language barrier we have established clear and effective two-way communication.”
Results
Hireserve ATS allows The University Hospital of Geneva to seamlessly integrate with its corporate website and as a result it is able to process candidates quickly and efficiently.
Internally, processes are more streamlined and it has allowed the organisation to have a uniform approach to recruitment. Candidate feedback has been positive with users benefiting from faster and more effective communications and the ability to track their application in the recruitment process.
The HR team has benefitted immensely with their administrative load significantly decreasing and communication between the team and hiring managers based across multiple locations has dramatically improved.
The Future
“We are delighted that the number of hiring managers who benefit from the system is steadily growing and their feedback has been extremely positive. In a few months we hope to be fully paperless. Hireserve has been extremely flexible and supportive and really listened to our needs.”
– Valèrie Mègevand, Human Resources Director
“Hireserve has been extremely flexible and supportive and really listened to our needs.”
Where to next?
Click the buttons below to read more
