2018-10-05 00:00:00 +0000 - Chaeny Emanavin
Tl:dr - DMHC’s technology department lost interesting candidates because they took other jobs while waiting for the state’s longer hiring process. The OI team worked with representatives from HR and IT to craft a better job listing template, provide better direction on completing the state application process, and illustrate the great working culture at DMHC. The new template yielded applicants that previously had not considered working for the state.
Team Members: Jacob Johnson, Tracy Ewing, Scott Borden, Tamara Srzentic
Office of Innovation Director: Chaeny Emanavin
Department Engagement Champion: Ralph Cesna
The Department of Managed Healthcare (DMHC) mission is to fully protect the health care rights of the more than 25 million Californians. One of the first innovation challenges undertaken by California Health and Human Services (CHHS) Agency’s newly commissioned Office of Innovation (OI), submitted by DMHC, is one that will be immediately familiar to most people working in and around California government technology. The challenge, in simplest terms, it that recruitment and retention of talented candidates to fill information technology (IT) positions in California government is difficult, for a number of reasons. The IT labor market is competitive because of lower unemployment rates than have been seen in decades. Private sector compensation is typically higher for equivalent work. Outreach to qualified potential applicants requires resources and updated practices aligned with current job-seekers’ preferences and expectations. The original challenge approached the topic broadly, considering all aspects of the recruitment and hiring process.
The initial conversations focused on the impacts to DMHC’s IT services caused by its inability to attract and hire qualified technology professionals. Important projects to address core business functions were not being addressed because approximately one third of the organization’s IT positions were vacant.
The initial challenge statement was, “Recruit talented information technology professionals in a highly competitive workplace.”
During the discovery phase, OI staff interviewed 13 employees at DMHC, including staff from Office of Technology and Innovation and Office of Administrative Services. Each interview consisted of unstructured open-ended questions designed to elicit interviewees’ experiences working in the challenge space, along with their thoughts on opportunities to make improvements. As the discovery phase neared completion, two distinct elements of the process emerged, recruiting, and hiring.
Recruiting is primarily concerned with outreach to job-seekers and the application submission process, while hiring consists of those activities and processes that happen after a candidate applies for a position, such as application screening, interviewing, selection, and onboarding of the newly hired employee.
In order to refine the challenge to an appropriate scope for the engagement, the OI team sought guidance from DMHC executive leadership, at which point, the decision was made to focus the effort on recruitment. Next, the team turned its attention to the ideation phase, in which the intent is to understand specific pain points and opportunities presented by the challenge, and to generate ideas for possible solutions.
During the discovery phase, the team formed a broad picture of the challenge space, allowing it to guide and support staff to ideate through journey mapping and focused brainstorming to refine the challenge to, “How might we more effectively attract and engage great talent to join Department of Managed Healthcare (DMHC), Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI)?”
To better understand how potential applicants find state job listings, the team conducted a journey mapping workshop. During this process, the DMHC staff brainstormed values of state employment, as well as possible motivations for job-seekers to apply for employment with DMHC. This information could be used to create more compelling job announcements and in communications with job-seekers. After journey mapping and brainstorming ideas, the team moved to the prototyping phase, in which it would develop one or more ideas further toward a possible solution for the refined challenge.
| A journey map is a visual interpretation of the overall story from an individual’s perspective of their relationship with an organization, service, or product. The story is told from the user’s or actor’s perspective, but also emphasizes the important intersections between user expectations and business requirements. |
The team developed two prototype solutions. One was an online job announcement that provided more relevant information for job-seekers, in a friendlier, less bureaucratic format. The other was a recruitment website that might serve as a landing page for prospective DMHC employees interested in technology jobs. The idea behind both prototypes, was to create a job-seeking experience that might be compelling enough to encourage potential applicants to overcome any hesitation they might feel regarding Cal HR’s examination and application processes. In addition to the two prototypes, OI used information gathered during the discovery and ideation phases to develop recommendations that it provided as part of an engagement summary document.
Since the engagement, DMHC has begun implementing new cultural practices for attracting IT candidates to DMHC based on user feedback and outreach research conducted during the engagement, and has started updating web pages and job announcement templates to include prototype content, as time and availability of resources permit. The OI team worked through a range of challenges along the way. The time passed quickly, and we ended with the realization that there continue to be challenges and opportunities around recruitment and hiring. Based on follow-up conversation with DMHC, it seems likely that there will be opportunity for continued work on this and related challenges, with possible inclusion of more CHHS departments with similar experience.