Mercy Health’s HR team named among the most innovative in Australia

Now in its third year, the HRD Innovative HR Team Report recognises HR teams who are at the forefront of change and innovation across several areas. These areas include, but are not limited to, HR technology, recruitment, and reward and recognition strategies.

Mercy Health’s Group Executive Director People, Learning & Culture Kate McCormack says the organisation is honoured to be placed among the most forward-thinking HR practitioners in the country.

“Mercy Health’s HR team is an early adopter of recruitment technology,” says Ms McCormack. “From interviewing candidates to conducting reference checks, we have actively embraced technology across multiple recruitment stages.”

Mercy Health partnered with Sonru, an automated video interview system, as part of its recruitment process in late 2013, resulting in an 80 per cent reduction in initial screening time.

“Through the video interviews, hiring managers are able to view the completed interviews in bulk at a time suitable to them,” explains Ms McCormack. “The tool also allows managers to assess candidates’ personality and gauge their cultural fit right from the start.”

Mercy Health also implemented an online reference checking process, by partnering with Xref, which not only saves the organisation time and money but also improves the quality of reference checks and reduces reference fraud.

“Requesting a reference report takes less than 30 seconds, and multiple checks can be lodged simultaneously. Since introducing the checking tool, we have seen a 97.3 per cent completion rate which is a very good outcome,” says Ms McCormack. “Mercy Health is a people business and the attraction and retention of a workforce is our greatest organisational risk. Our adoption of Sonru and Xref technology has certainly greatly assisted us to mitigate this risk.”