“And, thanks to our staff working so well together, it has created a really great atmosphere for the people we support. They have been making the most of the weather and growing so many vegetables in the garden, we were worried they were going to be missing out on a lot when their community activities were cancelled, but the team have pulled together so well and given our residents so many opportunities to try something new.”
Abi, our service implementation and development manager, supports managers across the south west region. She said: “I initially thought the interaction would be difficult when the candidate isn’t physically with you, but actually it has been working very well recruiting through video calls. It’s so much quicker and we will definitely continue to use videos moving forward.
“We like to include the people we support in our interview process, and have still been able to do that when using Teams. Joy, who lives in our supported living service in Basingstoke, has helped in some of our interviews. Joy asked questions and had a nice chat with the interviewee which was brilliant to see and gave us feedback after the interview. Even more people we support are now keen to be involved in our interviews – Joy is shouting about it from the rooftops, she’s buzzing!”
Claire, FitzRoy’s recruitment manager agreed: “The coronavirus pandemic has kickstarted different ways of recruiting that are just as good if not better for both the candidate and manager.
“We knew we needed to look at how we recruited staff – and this has forced us to do so sooner – it’s a really positive change and one that will be permanent. There are so many positives to utilising technology more in the process and being creative with how we recruit and select the very best staff for FitzRoy. This is just the beginning of lots of new ideas – we are very excited for the future of recruitment at FitzRoy.”