Using Technology to Improve Recruitment and Retention with United Methodist Communities, Dave Glenn

Better People Podcast

Dave Glenn, VP of HR for United Methodist Communities, discusses his successful recruitment and retention strategies, which utilize technology such as an app that gamifies employee referrals and an AI algorithm for a caregiver retention model. He also prioritizes data and AI in refining their hiring processes, emphasizes the importance of middle management in retention, and continuously strives to learn and improve.

David Glenn, the Vice president of HR at United Methodist Communities, joins us for this podcast episode. With over 100 years of providing care to seniors, United Methodist Communities embodies values of compassion, respect, stewardship, and service, which are evident in every aspect of their work. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Better People:

• Incentivizing employee referrals for recruitment via text, email, Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and Twitter.
• Utilizing employee referrals has led to a great retention rate compared to job board hires.
• The goal of expanding this program to other industries in the future.
• Using data to refine hiring questions and processes for better retention.
• The importance of pride, work mission, and safety for employee satisfaction.
• Embracing change and new ideas to improve efficiency and employee satisfaction.

Resources:

• United Methodist Communities
• MidAtlantic Employers’ Association (MEA)

Connecting with Dave Glenn:

• LinkedIn

Connecting with Margaret Uhrich:

• Margaret Uhrich on LinkedIn

Quotables:

• 03:37 – “But basically our applicant tracking system shoots out all of our job openings to the folks who have enrolled in this app, and then they can refer their friends and family, their social media followers to our jobs. And what it does is if when that goes out, it goes out through s m s text, email, Facebook, which I know a lot of employees are not on Facebook anymore. Their grandparents are, but not them. That's LinkedIn. WhatsApp, I believe, and Twitter. And so, so they could send it to any or all of those media, and if that person responds to that link, they get credit for it. So the system recognizes who, who referred them and then gives 'em credit. So, so it kind of gamifies it a little, it, it tracks, you know, how many people have sent jobs out and how many have come back, been interviewed or been hired so that we can reward folks for their diligence.”
• 5:57 – “So when you post a job on Indeed, it doesn't discriminate. You know who, who's getting that advertised, right? It goes out to everybody. But with this app, our individual employees, we would hope they would refer people like themselves, you know, their family members, their friends, perhaps they're like-minded. And if our employees are committed, hopefully we’ll get somebody similar who would be a great hire. So those people tend to respond, greater percentage of them respond, and they're quicker to hire. And as I'll, I'll point out in a few minutes, our retention rates are much greater for those individuals.”
• 8:08 – “Yeah, so I'll give you some examples. For instance, 12 month retention. The first year, typically from our Indeed hires, we retain about 63%, but through employee referrals, 78%, once you get out though to two years, typically we retain 35%. So it drops almost in half. But employee referrals 63%, so 35% versus 63%. And then when you go out three years, 26% for job boards, 57% for referrals. So we hang on to these people much longer when they come referred.”
• 10:47 – “So not only is it really helping you with your recruitment, I have to imagine it's helping to engage those really committed employees that you have. Definitely. And I think it helps their retention if their friends are working there or a family member. I mean, there's some families, we have two and three members of the family working in the same building.”
• 19:30 – “You can have the best senior leadership, but if you don't have good middle management, you're going to fail. So we've established something we've called UMC University, where quarterly we bring managers and potential managers in and train them on various aspects of management, the nuts, and bolts things, the HR law, you know, which I usually do, but there's, there's finance, there's IT. But then getting into things like emotional intelligence and, and other leadership qualities, bringing in other speakers. So we're just getting into it actually in a couple weeks, our second round of training. So we're very intentional about that, and we're going to keep that going forever, hopefully, and, and really help to develop these folks.”