THE CHALLENGE

Outdated COVID-era hiring was costing millions

During the COVID era, healthcare organizations went to great lengths to hire nurses however they could. Ascension was no different, using large sign-on bonuses and relying on expensive contract labor to deliver excellent patient care, even in times of crisis. In the years since, Ascension suspected that a sustained overreliance on contract labor was hurting the morale of its permanent workforce and costing it millions in unrealized ROI. With registered nurses making up nearly half its staff and still in high demand, Arielle Grupe, AVP of workforce insights and planning, and her team knew they needed a better way to hire and retain. They turned to Visier to find the workforce metrics that would help reduce contract labor and improve registered nurse recruitment at the same time.

Once leaders see how intuitive it is, their hesitation around data and technology dissipates. They realize it's as simple as using their iPhone, they know where to click and what to look for. That comfort drives adoption, and adoption drives strategy. - Arielle Grupe, AVP of Workforce Insights and Planning

THE SOLUTION

Pinpointing where to cut contract labor and speed up hiring

Focusing on registered nurse recruitment, Ascension used Visier to review its hiring process and identify the metrics that mattered most. That analysis informed a focused three-month sprint of process improvements, like extending same-day offers to boost acceptance rates and, critically, shortening the average time between interview and offer. As Grupe puts it, Visier provides critical insights into where the organization may be leaving talent on the table. Without Visier, she adds, the team would not have been able to discover what it did, pulling together multiple sources of data to analyze and improve the recruitment pipeline.

THE OUTCOME

Tens of millions saved, and nearly 1,000 more nurses retained

Analyzing integrated ATS data on bonus trends, timing, and job families, Grupe's team found, corroborated by their data science team, that unchecked sign-on bonuses were costing tens of millions of dollars while having surprisingly little impact on applications or hires and only marginal retention benefits for specific groups. Armed with these insights, Ascension revamped its sign-on bonus policy, cutting millions in ineffective spending without hurting recruitment outcomes. The result, Grupe says, is a prime example of using talent acquisition (TA) data to challenge the status quo and drive smart, cost-effective decisions.

Beyond the savings, Visier empowered Ascension's nurse leaders and supported workforce stability. Leaders valued the ability to drill from market to department level for real-time headcount and trend data, and in an environment already saturated with data, Visier's clear, centralized metrics made insight accessible and drove strong adoption. The result: Ascension retained nearly 1,000 more nurses year over year, a welcome boost to its caregiving capacity.