The Challenge

Headquartered in St. Louis, SSM Health operates hundreds of care delivery sites, serving communities throughout Missouri, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin.

But to compete in a challenging talent landscape, they needed to streamline the candidate experience and bring more efficiency and insight to recruiters so they could forge more productive relationships with best-fit candidates. More specifically, they wanted to:

• Increase applicant flow in the RN space by 15%

• Implement an employer brand that candidates recognize and respect

• Provide recruiters with a technology platform to engage candidates at the prospect or lead level, rather than waiting for them to become candidates

Additional top goals on their to-do list included:

• Fix broken integrations

• Provide job seekers with a quick apply option to reduce drop off

• Update their career site with built-in CMS capabilities

• Understanding the recruitment marketing ROI

The Solution

Seeking an all-inclusive provider that could offer a hyperpersonalized Career Site, CMS, Talent CRM, and quick apply option that would fully integrate with their Workday ATS, the team chose the Phenom Intelligent Talent Experience platform.

A huge advantage? The ability to implement their new technology in a fraction of the time it takes other providers. In fact, to meet critical staffing needs on the horizon, SSM Health set the ambitious timeline of just 60 days to launch a completely overhauled talent experience.

Through Phenom HRIS Experience and Falcon delivery model — and concerted collaboration among teams — the possibility became a reality with the help of self-service tools, out-of-the-box templates, and a no-code interface that eases third-party data exchange, reduces reliance on developers, and empowers non-technical teams to work at a much faster pace.

The Delivery

How exactly did Phenom and SSM Health pull off this lightning-fast implementation?

At the core was Falcon, a delivery model developed to reduce decision fatigue and focus project teams on building and adopting Phenom’s core functionality first. Using an iterative methodology, Phenom’s highly configurable platform then allows teams to continuously improve the user experience over time as adoption of the platform increases.

At the end of the rapid implementation cycle, which typically ranges between 4-6 weeks based on customer resources, companies have access to the following Phenom products:

• Talent CRM with campaigning, sourcing, hiring tools

• Career Site and CMS

• Talent Analytics

• Service Hub for user management

“We recognize our customers’ excitement to transform their HR strategies and processes with immediacy so they don’t lose market opportunity,” said Saumil Gandhi, SVP of One Global Delivery at Phenom. “This critical need is not lost on Phenom. We have the resources, drive, and spirit of partnership to invest deeply in rapid delivery services like Falcon to bring work-altering products to companies faster.”

While the technologically advanced solutions that define HRIS Experience were essential for SSM Health’s implementation, team and partner alignment were also crucial. Clear goals and roles were set and agreed upon every step of the way — including which components didn’t need to be fast-tracked for SSM Health to start accomplishing their goals.

Also pivotal to success was the fact that SSM Health had the IT team members and resources required to meet the demand of an intense weeks-long project commitment.

“Having the technical teams in place and resources available was absolutely critical to the project’s success,” said Cayler. “We knew we had to be able to ‘catch’ what Phenom would give us. If not, it would be much more challenging. It really had to be a partnership.”

SSM Health Project Timeline

• Week 0 Provision all products purchased by customer

• Week 1 Provide access to CRM for core project team

• Week 2 Provide access to career site and CMS for core project team

• Week 3 Build out all career site widgets, configurations, and chatbot

• Week 4 Set up CRM fully with all relevant jobs, candidates, and configurations

• Week 5 Complete launch activity for go-live

The Results

Just 6 weeks after signing with Phenom, SSM Health launched its all-new career site with near immediate ROI including:

• 10-15% higher applicant volume

• 5,000+ chatbot leads

• 10x more CRM contacts than generated by recruiters alone

With full implementation now complete, Cayler continues to see dramatic results — especially from the seamless experience Phenom’s Hosted Apply offers. “Hands down, Phenom’s quick apply option has been a game changer for us,” said Cayler. “Looking at before-and-after stats, the difference is 400% on leads and 292% on job leads,” she reported, which has translated to impactful increases in both applications and hires across nursing and non-nursing roles.

Increased Visibility

Not only is the application process much more convenient for job applicants, but it also benefits recruiters by instantly capturing candidate information and funneling it into the CRM for full visibility and tracking with Talent Analytics. “We lacked visibility to candidates’ information unless they completed our entire application. Today, recruiters are engaging with only name, email, and phone. This is a great step forward for our organization!”

AI insights and analytics from their Phenom Chatbot are also proving valuable to their recruitment strategy. “It’s saving our recruiters time so they can do what they do best — create meaningful relationships with quality candidates who we can hire quicker and more efficiently.

More Personalized Content

Meanwhile, on-the-fly career site personalization, possible through Phenom’s AI and intuitive CMS, allows SSM Health to showcase dynamic, relevant content to site visitors. “Every time a candidate returns to the career site, we can serve them personalized jobs,” explained Cayler. “This is key to engagement, especially among graduate nurses.”

To follow up with these candidates in a very intentional way, their recruitment marketing team leverages the CRM, Phenom Campaigns and SMS to build out segmented campaigns. “Now that we’re able to implement drip email and text marketing campaigns, we’re engaging with candidates faster,” Cayler said. “We’re using the platform to make offers to candidates within minutes after the interview process which is a great benefit considering the tight market.” In addition to candidate communication, the team is automating personalized sends to their school contacts and new hires for added efficiency.

Together with Phenom, they're achieving:

• ↑69%

  Increase YOY RN hires

• ↑27%

  Increase YOY Non-RN Hires

• ↑50%

  Increase YOY Future Hires in Campus Recruiting Graduate Nursing Program

• ↑17%

  YOY increase in RN applications per day

• ↑18%

  YOY increase in average applications per day