From Crisis to Continuity: A Data-Driven Approach to Recruitment & Attrition Management in Non-Profit Hiring

A national nonprofit healthcare provider, responsible for nearly 40% of the U.S. blood supply, urgently needed a stronger nonprofit hiring strategy to staff mobile phlebotomy and driver roles that were critical to maintaining life-saving operations.

Operating under nonprofit compensation constraints—and facing a staggering 161% annual turnover rate—the organization struggled with talent acquisition and retention. Staffing shortages, limited brand visibility, and fierce competition from higher-paying healthcare systems made it difficult to attract and retain qualified candidates.

• Severe Talent Shortage: Prolonged effects of the Great Recession and widening skills gaps left the mobile Blood Collection teams significantly understaffed.
• Mission-Critical Stakes: With only 40 percent of the nation’s blood supply flowing through this provider, any delay in filling roles translated directly into fewer lives saved.
• Non-Profit Compensation Limits: Competing against hospitals and other well-funded healthcare systems made attracting qualified candidates difficult.
• Extremely High Turnover: An annual turnover rate of 161 percent created a continual need for new hires, dramatically increasing recruitment costs and administrative burden.

The Solution

As with all of our Solutions, we began a review of the Client’s Recruitment process from beginning to end using the People Science Recruiting Continuum.

We then focused on the controllable factors below we knew would provide the “wins” Talent Acquisition was aiming for:

• Clarifying the Employee Value Proposition (EVP): First we needed to determine what would interest a candidate in working for our client. To do so, we conducted interviews and focus groups with current team members and top performers identified the organization’s unique cultural attributes and job-specific benefits. This EVP framework then guided recruiting messaging, onboarding materials, and management practices to support better fit and longer tenure with new hires.
• Dedicated, Sector-Specialized Recruiting Team: A small, focused recruiting unit, with expertise in clinical staffing and non-profit environments, was assigned alongside the client’s Talent Acquisition leaders. Weekly coaching sessions and real-time performance tracking enabled us to make rapid adjustments to sourcing strategies as needed.

• Hiregate for Crucial Recruiting Metrics: The Client’s ATS, Workday, did not collect all the required candidate data and market insights needed to make crucial business decisions in real time.Hiregate was used to augment Workday to provide crucial insights that informed decisions around pay structure, referral incentives and targeted outreach campaigns, while at the same time, store housing the candidate pipelines being built by the Sourcing and Recruiting teams.
• Multichannel Sourcing & Community Outreach: Our strategy tobuild pipelines of active applicants, employee referrals, and passive candidates involved:
  • Segmented email campaigns and social-media outreach
  • Partnerships with local universities and community groups
  • Ongoing monitoring of open-rate and source-to-hire metrics to refine messaging
• Streamlined Stakeholder Coordination: We made sure to conduct daily-to-weekly check-ins with talent-acquisition leadership, hiring managers, and field teams to provide clear communication, efficient interview scheduling, and swift onboarding transitions.