SPEAKER_01: 0:00

You must have seen a big change in improvement. What's been the big change that you've seen?

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

All the big changes. Kripes, where do you start? When we talk about support workers, we we do get extraordinarily high volumes of applications. And one of the challenges we've always had is how do you go through that mailbag? We were getting significant percentages of international people without the right to work, perhaps hoping that we could review their CV and sponsor them. And and they were not valuable for us at that time.

SPEAKER_01: 0:29

A little birdie tells me that you're actually a recorded artist and that you actually have recorded your your own music and you play in a band.

SPEAKER_00: 0:39

I do play in a band. I play bass, guitar, and I sing. Uh sometimes lead when they let me.

SPEAKER_01: 0:45

You know, you still look as if you're you're you're 25, you still got that spring in your step. Yeah. What what is it that gets you up in the morning? Uh not not the fitness class at Melotic.

SPEAKER_00: 0:55

Not the banner. No, no, no, not the fitness, not the Tai Chi. And not the alarm. So what gets me up in the morning is the excitement of the curious day. No two days are the same in healthcare. I can't rest.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12

Welcome to this episode of the Automated Analytics Podcast. I'm delighted to have with me today Richard Young, who runs the recruitment function for the Active Care Group. Welcome to the show. Thank you. It's very good to be here. Excellent. Now, Richard, you have been in business and had a career for 25 years. Now, I've got to be honest with you, you don't look a day older than 25. So clearly, clearly, I don't know how you fit the 25 years in, but you actually started in recruitment, is that right?

SPEAKER_00: 1:42

Yes, I started in good old-fashioned recruitment agency, actually, uh running a temp desk, an industrial temp desk back in in the day.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50

And then where did you move on from recruitment?

SPEAKER_00: 1:52

Because you've dipped in and out of recruitment over the years. Yeah, so um I'd consider myself now to be a um seasoned, I think that's the word, seasoned HR practitioner. Um so I've stinted in between recruitment and HR. So I've moved in between, uh, been an HR business partner, ran HR function, and now I'm running a recruitment and onboarding function.

SPEAKER_01: 2:14

Over those 25 years, you must have seen a big change in recruitment. You know, if you think 25 years ago starting an agency, now working, you know, directly for an employer. What's been the big change that you've seen? All the big changes.

SPEAKER_00: 2:28

Cripes, where do you start? Um, compliance has been huge, that change in terms of the whole right to work, that soft border control stuff. But lots of technology. It's that shift to digital. There's a massive shift in that regard. Obviously, in more recent times, that looks very exciting because it's AI related, but you know, the advent of ATS is away from mailbags and into ATS and managing volumes. So that's the sort of thing. Um, and and then skills-based hiring, those kind of the advent of all of that stuff as well. So there's so many changes that I've seen over those years. Now I just want to step back.

SPEAKER_01: 3:07

You just said the words mailbag. So for some of our younger audience, what's a mailbag if you don't mind me asking?

SPEAKER_00: 3:14

So I can remember um when we used to get applications in writing. Good old-fashioned people, you know, good old-fashioned days where people would talk to you, you know. So there's a lot of um interviewing that was, you know, face-to-face interviewing those days. And the mailbag was always full of applications. So, and then I've very early got into email, and then that changed the game right there. Um, and then, you know, even though digital CVs were not a thing. So that's how I started my career back in those days.

SPEAKER_01: 3:46

And that's amazing to see that, as you say, that that's that kind of growth, as it were, the change within within the recruitment industry. Now, let's talk about the active care group. So, some people may not know of the active care group and who they are, but they're a very specialist care organization.

SPEAKER_00: 4:03

Well, we're one of the largest independent complex care providers in the UK. It's a very interesting business because it's a um a very broad-ranging set of services. Um, we employ about four and a half thousand people in the UK, um, and we support people with neurological conditions and disorders right the way through to people who might have had road traffic accidents with uh life-changing injuries. Um, and those physical injuries need care in different environments. So it might be that they're people that we are working with that are in a hospital environment. There could also be people that are in supported living environments, getting therapeutic input and support from speech and language therapists and occupational therapists, helping them to recover uh skills, as it were, and then there's the people that actually now live back in the community in their own homes, and we support people in their own homes as well.

SPEAKER_01: 4:55

So, really a fascinating business with with I guess multi-fast is what you could say. Is this your first experience of being in healthcare? Have you worked in healthcare before? And and what are the differences that you find in healthcare compared to other industries that you've worked in?

SPEAKER_00: 5:09

Oh, cripes. Um I love the culture of healthcare because it's people with people. Um and I've worked in HR, in lots of different organizations, corporate organizations that don't um, you know, don't the end service isn't related to care. So I've worked in mental health um as well. So I've had about 11 years in healthcare. But before that, I've worked in, I started my career after recruitment um agencies. I went into financial services as an HR consultant, worked in contact centers, I worked in an environment where we started a Challenger Bank. Um that was really interesting running that project to set that up. Um and then I've also worked for places like Carlsburg, uh, Britfix Soft Drinks, and then I had a good stint with Amazon uh doing their leadership hiring, which was a very interesting experience, and I learned a great deal from that organization. Uh, you may have heard of them.

SPEAKER_01: 6:06

Yeah, I was gonna say Amazon, you know, uh you you clearly must like companies that start with an A, you know, Axe care Amazon. But finding Amazon's leadership team, was that in the UK?

SPEAKER_00: 6:15

Yeah, um when I was there, I was um involved in recruiting uh a number of senior leaders in their fulfillment centres, which is the the big boxes you see around the country. Um, and uh also got involved in at the time we were doing a thing called Amazon Last Mile, which is that delivery to the door. Yeah. So I was involved in helping to secure some of the senior people for that project, which has now become what you see on the high street as a as they scoot around the place. But I left um and went into a boutique recruiter using video. Um and so I've I've had a number of and since since Amazon, I've always remembered some of the tenets that I learned at Amazon. One of the ones that I think are one of my favorites is Jeff Bezos saying, you know, I'd rather interview 50 people and not hire someone than hire the wrong person into a job because it has such a big impact on culture.

SPEAKER_01: 7:11

And and I think that is one of the challenges of recruitment today, is hiring that right person. You know, you don't always get it right as you say and it's it's not only skill set, but it's fit within culture. But hiring within the healthcare industry, it's not easy, is it?

SPEAKER_00: 7:26

This sector is very interesting because a CV doesn't tell the same story as it might for an accountant or you know in the financial services for professional functions. So you need to do something a bit different because great skills in care, empathy, compassion, uh, those attributes don't always lend themselves to be presented nicely in a tidy curriculum v tie. So so we do look at ways in which we can ask the right kind of questions. So the interview process itself is really key.

SPEAKER_01: 7:59

Now you're a client of automated analytics, might as well just declare that now. But what why did you come to us? What was your your biggest challenge when we first started working? I think it was about two years ago when we first met Richard.

SPEAKER_00: 8:10

Yeah. Um we met and I was trawling the market looking because I'd got a I'd got a number of recruiters who are handling a similar kind of mailbag, not quite physically a mailbag like in when I when I started. Um, but those guys get a high volume. I mean, we when we talk about support workers, we we do get extraordinarily high volumes of applications. The way the market is now, the job platforms are another big change in our sector and in the industry. People like Indeed, it's very easy to upload your CV. It's very easy to ping it into 20 or 30 applications. And and in my day, we were writing application supporting letters. There's a whole process involved in only handling two or three applications at a time. It's really labor intensive. Now a candidate can send to a lot of people, you need to be able to respond to that really quickly. We get a high volume of applications, and one of the challenges we've always had is how do you go through that mailbag on a Monday and get to the really good candidates quickly? So we were attracted to Talent Track as an AI solution that enabled us to cut through, set some screening questions that were really relevant. We have a lot of different types of vacancy. As I've said, people living at home have a different need because it's a different kind of workplace to a hospital environment. So we build in those screening questions. Talent track helps us. And one of the other areas that it helps us with is managing, if you like, a soft border control. Because those applications we were finding, we were getting significant percentages of international people without the right to work, perhaps hoping that we could review their CV and sponsor them. Um and and they were not um valuable for us at that time as a as a as a um as part of that uh mailing. So I needed the team to be able to get to the good candidates that were, if you like, qualified candidates for us. Um and that saved an awful lot of time.

SPEAKER_01: 10:09

And I think it's it's interesting because when I compare our American business to our UK business, in America, advertiser job maybe get five applications a day. In a UK, you advertise a role, and you're talking 30, 40 applications a day. And again, the challenge is that that ability to be able to work, because I think you know the UK positions itself quite rightly, you know, because um we we need immigrant workers at the end of the day as an economy, but there's criteria, and I think the challenge, particularly we see in healthcare, and it's it's quite unique to healthcare, actually, is that we attract a lot of people outside of the UK that either want to come work in healthcare or the NHS and and see you as a bit of a stepping stone. And that I mean, there's times when I think you know, 40, 50, even 60% of applications have been knocked out of that almost that auto-stage, as you say, that soft border control, because they just don't have the right to work in the UK, which that must free up a lot of time for your recruiters not having to go through that volume of applications because they know that they don't have the right to work in the first instance.

SPEAKER_00: 11:17

Absolutely. That was and that was a significant first step for us in terms of that group of candidates, that demographic, if you like. Um, I mean, obviously, we do sponsor, um, and you know, that's become much more difficult. We now cannot sponsor overseas workers. So we we're looking at the displaced worker pool, for example, for uh as a relevant place for us to recruit as a source. But you know, we also needed to know where our good candidates that were qualified candidates were coming from. And TalentTracks helped us to do um identify some sourcing as well. And that's helped us with where we choose to spend um our um money. And there are certain big job boards that you know kind of rule the roost, and it's been interesting for us to be able to explore other job boards and other job platforms and find sources very successfully through multiple means, and that's been really good for us to negotiate different deals, as it were.

SPEAKER_01: 12:11

Because I think it's that's one of your challenges, if you don't mind me saying, is that you know, a lot of our clients, you include, don't have the world's biggest budget, and therefore it's trying to work out well, actually, what's my return investment? Where am I better off spending my money? It's not always with the bigger players, sometimes it's with the smaller players, and that's that I think you've seen that over the past particularly 12 months, and you've been very, very brave in making decisions, right? We're gonna switch that off, we're gonna spend less, we're gonna try some here. Why are you so brave?

SPEAKER_00: 12:41

Look, um I think AI is here to stay. I I'm I'm I'm old-fashioned. We've said I'm seasoned, and and we're in a stew right now. And the stew is that we're building, many organizations are building great big construction walls that are technologically led. And and I was used to talking to people to find out what the culture was like. You know, you'd meet the person that was going to manage you, um, and and we're creating lots of um tools that, you know, the technology is wonderful, but it's getting sometimes in the way of human interaction. And what I think candidates really want is to understand what a culture is like. Uh, and they want to talk to real people. So you we've got to use it as a complementary tool. And I think Talent Track enables us to do that, but we still have recruiters that speak to people. Uh, that's really important to me as part of our strategy that we continue to do that so they get a sense of who we are, what we're about, and what our culture is, because you know, that's where they're going to be working. But you know, allowing people to see through the window in the wall is really important.

SPEAKER_01: 13:48

Because what I've been impressed with the most is you know, we can deliver whatever technical solution, you know, for recruitment you want in a way, but it it takes you as the client to to pick up the ball and run with it. But what we are amazed at is just your hiring staffs just went through the roof. You know, you went from hiring a handful to a heck of a lot very, very quickly because you had the time to spend, I think you had the time to spend on nurturing and talking to those good candidates.

SPEAKER_00: 14:16

Yeah, and when and when we met, um we've got we had very, very high volume vacancies, lots of vacancies. We then have gone through a period where those vacancies have fallen away because we've filled our retention's quite good. We've got quite um an appealing retention level, um, which is unusual, is a lot lower than a lot of our competitors. Um and I think that's because we've recruited well and we've enabled you know a lot of new people to come on board, and those people have helped us to change and shift the dial on the culture. So, you know, and that's manifested in all sorts of different ways. For example, um we've moved the dial in terms of the CQC. So there are a large proportion of our services now good or above. And three or four years ago when I joined, um that was not the case, it was much lower. Um, so so and that's because there are a lot of people that have come on board, you know, that have helped us to change the culture and and want to be part of all of this. So that's one of the ways. One of the things that's helped us enormously is just purely cost in terms of the the cost reduction. We've gone from, I think we were spending about£4.90 we worked out on an on a candidate as a qualified candidate. That's what it was costing us to get to someone all through there. And now we're we're spending probably costs about 90 pence, 94 pence, something like that. Um so it's a lot less expensive for us from the job board perspective. But vacancies are gonna shoot back upwards now. Um, we're pivoting our business, we're looking at um developing private business uh with assistive technology in our active neuro rehabilitation business. So we're gonna be looking for a different type of person. So we're back out, but it's a it's gonna be about a quality sift. And I think that's what talent tracks enable us to do all the way along, is a quality sift. And it's helped us with reducing applications and it's helped us with finding the right quality. And we're gonna have to ramp that quality up again.

SPEAKER_01: 16:14

So choosing an AI solution. I mean, there's a lot of talk about AI, but there's actually very, very practical demonstrations of AI being used to deliver you know tangible results. You've talked about a massive drop in in uh quality application costs, you've talked about cost saving. What led you to choose AI? Because I again I think that's a very brave decision to make. You you're one of the forebearers in your industry to write, we're going to use AI for good.

SPEAKER_00: 16:42

Uh I'm curious. Um, and throughout my career, I've kind of you know been curious. I like to learn. Um, I've been, you know, sort of I I did my master's quite late. I did a master's in HR. I've done a master's in coaching, exec coaching. I I I continue to learn. I encourage that with the people in my team. I like creativity. AI can do some stuff. I'm also not very good with boring work. And AI can remove a lot of repetitive duplication. And a lot of the people around me at work don't like boring work either. Um, there's a lot more interesting things we can be doing. AI can take away some of that dull, repetitive, high duplication, high-intensity stuff. It's a boon. Um, so why wouldn't I be interested in that? Now I use Chat GPT. Now, I can remember when I first started my HR career writing a job profile. Took a bit of a while, took a lot of time to work that out. I can now pump that out very quickly on ChatGPT or Claude or any of these tools. Um, but I still use, as do my team, their experience to assess whether that's right. So you always need that human, human curation.

SPEAKER_01: 18:00

Yeah, and I think I think that's very important when you're talking about AI. And again, when we met two years ago, I was very intrigued by, you know, you asked me a lot of questions. You're very intrigued by AI. But I want to delve into you a little bit now. So, what gets you up in the morning then? What what drive after a 25-year career, you know, you still look as if you're you're you're 25, you still got that spring in your step. Yeah. What what is it that gets you up in the morning? Uh not not the fitness class at Melotic.

SPEAKER_00: 18:28

Not the bad, no, no, no, not the fitness, not the Tai Chi, and not the alarm. Um, I get excited because I'm at a point now where I've got quite a large team. And um, you know, we have a big and very demanding remit. Uh, and it's a very interesting business, and we're always changing the business. You know, we're evolving and continuously improving. And I'm fascinated by that. Always have been. You know, when I was working through Amazon and previously we've we've looked at Kaizen interventions and things like that. That was a big thing at Amazon that you could call people in and take a look at your process end-to-end. We're doing it now. So I'm I'm looking at our um ATS and we've got the opportunity to re-evaluate again the processes that we follow end-to-end in our recruitment activity. Um, the key thing is all the time, we've got to be fast, and we've just got to be faster and faster. Now, one of the aspects of healthcare that's really challenging is that we need to safeguard the hires we make. So that's a lot of intense scrutiny around their background history, disclosure and barring, all those sorts of things. That has to happen at pace. AI can probably help with increasing pace because it takes a lot of the legwork out, a lot of that kind of basic decision making and time-consuming activity. So, what gets me up in the morning is the excitement of the curious day. No two days are the same in healthcare. You know, I'm I'm dealing with a major UK VI submission, even as we speak, which is really requesting more certificates of sponsorship. That's that's the day today and tomorrow to submit that because it's there's an urgent request. There's some leadership hiring, there's volume hiring, some specialist hiring. We're looking at, we're looking at our employment brand again. You know, it's and it's making sure that we present the organization in a particular, you know, in the right way. I I you know, I there's uh I can't rest. I just can't rest because there's so much and it's so much fun. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm um really enjoying it. Recruitment's very tangible, has a very clear output, and I feel like we're going through a stage. When I first joined Active um four years ago, nearly four years ago, there was a struggle to recruit, multiple ATSs needed to be replaced. We had lots of um uh you know people who weren't feeling very connected with the business, you know, as recruiters in-house. And now I think we've got a a team. I I love my team, I might say. They're real grafters, great thinkers, very customer-centered, um, and they do all the work. I I just get to get a little bit of the credit now and again, but those guys are the ones, and they're an amazing team, and it's it's a real pleasure to work with some of the guys that we have in and across our business. So I yeah, what's not to get up for?

SPEAKER_01: 21:18

I mean, I love your energy enthusiasm. I think it's very, very infectious. Now, outside of work, a little birdie tells me that you're actually a recorded artist, and that you actually have recorded your your own music and you play in a band.

SPEAKER_00: 21:34

I do play in a band. Um I play bass, guitar, and I sing. Uh sometimes lead when they let me. Um and I've been I've been in bands for years. I used to be really embarrassed about this because um, you know, people think, oh, you want to be in a band. When I was in a band, I did want to be famous and I did want to be rich and I did want to be, you know, all those things. Um now it's just part of my DNA. I I just enjoy the interaction. Um, it's great for my mental health, and you know, maybe not so for the people I play with because I probably frustrate them. But but you know, I I enjoy it immensely. Uh I've written songs, I've had my own originals band and been recorded, um, published. We've had signed um deals. I've got music on Spotify now.

SPEAKER_01: 22:22

Oh, now come on, you've got to give us the the name of the Shake Hands, Eric, on Spotify.

SPEAKER_00: 22:27

Uh we must have what, four listeners if I could get five now. If I could get at least a couple more today, that would be wonderful. Um, but that creative process, and I learned so much about business from being in in bands, different bands. You know, hitting deadlines is all about being in a band. You know, you've got to be able to turn it on for the crowd, you've got to be able to engage and entertain and communicate very well. Not saying I'm I'm that person, but as part of that unit, you've got to be able to work together to grab an audience's attention. There's so much to being in a band that's very like being in business, teamworking, and uh, you know, sort of being creative.

SPEAKER_01: 23:10

So my Friday night banger and and your Friday night banger. Friday night banger, my kids know this, a few of my friends know this is Duran Duran Hungry Like the Wolf. Right. That the weekend doesn't start until that gets played in the kitchen. Right. Usually about 6.01, 6.02 of a Friday evening. What's your Friday night banger?

SPEAKER_00: 23:30

Oh, um I think I would have said, hey Jude, but that's not really a kind of uplifting banger, is it? Um probably something by talking heads. I'm really into it. I love talking heads. David Burns just released another album yesterday, uh, which I'm looking at.

SPEAKER_01: 23:50

Have you downloaded it already?

SPEAKER_00: 23:51

I've got it. Yeah, it's on Spotify. I've had it in all good stockings. Uh um, hope he's listening. Um I'm promoting for him. Um I uh I love talking heads. I'd probably go for once in a lifetime because I think it's such an unusual song, such a combination of rhythm, style, and everybody knows it, and it's a really I mean it for all sorts of reasons it shouldn't work. Yeah. Um and it's just so curious, and you know, it's an unusual piece of art.

SPEAKER_01: 24:19

And so if there was one song that you'd wish you'd written that's not that song. That's not that song.

SPEAKER_00: 24:26

Or or a Beatles song, what would it be? Oh. Um Do you know? I think Radio Head always fascinates me. So probably um what would I go for? Karma Police, I think is a great song. You know, um real, lots of dynamics, lots of different stuff. None of these are the songs that I play in the band, by the way. What what what genre is the band then? So what we do a bit of punk, um, a little bit of mod, a bit of soul. We have a very good soul singer. Um, and I sing I do sing very good harmony back in, actually, I have to say. I'm very good at I can't wait for the influence. I love harmony. Do I get a backstage pass if I if I didn't know? Of course you did. I mean the pubs are very small, so the backstage might be the gents, but you know that's that's there you go. There you go.

SPEAKER_01: 25:14

Take it as you find it. So what what led you to pick up the bass guitar then? Have you play always played the bass guitar or uh have you tried different instruments? What led you down? Because the bass guitar is is it's a dick, you know, it's not it's not the go-to for everybody.

SPEAKER_00: 25:27

No, um it's interesting because when I started out, I started playing acoustic guitar and was very into Bob Dylan. I used to uh used to stick a harmonica on my desk with blue tack, sit underneath it because I couldn't afford the play the harmonica while it was there, and I'd be on the floor playing guitar underneath. And Bob Dylan was fascinating to me, as were the Beatles, as you know. Um, and then I'm I just decided one day I wanted to kind of play something slightly different. Bass guitar isn't easier, it's a physically, you know, it's a it's a difficult instrument to play because physically you need to be stronger. Um, but it's it's easier to work out and it's like a lead guitar with four strings, and um, and it's the heartbeat of the band. You know, I I would say this to the guys, you know, without me, you are nothing. But it's not quite true because the singer is very important and the drums are very important, you know, and all that. But no, as part of a team, I love playing the bass, I really enjoy the sound, um, and uh I'm rubbish, but you can get away with murder with it.

SPEAKER_01: 26:30

Well, that doesn't sound like a bad bad place to be when you're in a band, I must admit. I I love your enthusiasm about it, and I must admit, you know, the creativity behind music. I even my head, the way it works is is I I was where do you start with a song? You know, how do you start? Because you've written something of your own. Where do you start with writing a song? What what what how how do you get in the mood? What's the first kind of part of the process to actually write your own music?

SPEAKER_00: 26:53

When I when I when I've written songs, generally I'll I'll start off with a guitar um and I'll just strum a few chords. You only need to know a small handful of chords. This is the first thing. Um, so you maybe five or six chords will get you by. You could you can work out a lot of rock and roll from just three chords, but you know, five or six chords. There's a there's a strange sensation of flow state, which I think sports people would recognise, where you get into a lack of interference, you're not thinking consciously, you're not worrying about the s the shot, the golf swing, the pickleball hit, or whatever it is. You know, you're very in a relaxed state, and that's when the magic can happen and stuff comes out. So I often have a little recording next to me, and words are always a bit more tricky. You've got to be a bit more considered about working what to say, so you can sing gibberish. David Byrne does it very well. Speaking in tongues is an album, and that's about where he sings the gibberish, and then they go back and he writes all the words. So he'll just make noises over the tune as you're creating it, as they were creating it. That's how the talking heads were. Beatles would bring it a different style of writing. But my way is to get into a very sort of unusual flow state, and it's all like you become a vessel. I've heard other songwriters describe that sense of you're like a vessel. I'm talking like I'm Noel Gallagher, right? He's sold millions, doesn't he? You know, I haven't sold millions, I've sold hardly any, half a dozen. You know, my family bought most of it. Um, but it's the same principle of just it comes from nowhere. I'm fascinated. I don't understand it. It's magic, it's witchcraft. Um, I don't ask too much of why it happens. It's a bit like having a thought. You have a lot of thoughts, you're a you're a very creative and um fast-thinking individual. How do you explain where those thoughts come from? It's very difficult. And it's the same, I think, with creating music, it's just a spiritual thing almost. Borderline spiritual, I'd say.

SPEAKER_01: 28:53

It's been fascinating to learn more about you and and your background and your you know 25 years. I mean, you should get a medal for that, as far as I'm concerned, at least in the ward at the very least. So, what's the future for for Richard Young?

SPEAKER_00: 29:06

Um, well, um they say, don't they, that you spend your early career learning, and I feel like now I'm giving back a little bit more. I want to be, I want to talk a lot less and listen a lot more and hear the people around me. So I'm trying to um be more of a coach, um, be more of an influencer in the sense of um helping other people to think things through because the answers were always inside me, and I just needed some other people to pull them out of me. And I think it's the same, I'd like to do the same for others. Um, and and that's what coaching taught me was really you know, that you can tease out from people the solution because it sits right in there. Um and that's one of the areas I'd really like to uh develop in my career is is kind of more coaching, more reflection. Um, and I'm gonna be watching the AI story unfold because I just think that the The applications are daily emerging about how we can use this. Um, but you know, recruitment essentially is still people talking to people.

SPEAKER_01: 30:11

It's still a people based business, isn't it? Absolutely. Richard, thank you very much. One for being a great client, two, for giving up your time to be on this uh podcast, but three for being a great guest and sharing us your your experience and knowledge. Thank you very much. Thank you.