Australian Healthcare Associates (AHA) is Australia’s largest specialist consultancy in health and human services. With over 30 years of experience partnering with federal and state governments, AHA delivers high-impact evaluations, reviews, and large-scale program administration to improve health and social outcomes nationwide.
“We aim to hire great people, look after them, pay them well and give them interesting and challenging work, enabling them to thrive.”
Before Refapp, the reference checking process was slow and labor-intensive.
“Our biggest challenge was that we typically contacted referees by phone,” Tamara shares.
“Bulk recruiting meant attempting up to 80 phone calls and contacting two referees for each candidate. This was incredibly time-consuming, as we often found that we played ‘phone tag’ with referees."
Tamara highlights several key reasons for choosing Refapp:
“We received excellent support from our Refapp representative during implementation (and after),” Tamara says. “We were able to get up and running almost immediately, and setting up the integration with Workable was straightforward.”
Now, when a candidate moves to the reference check stage in Workable, it signals HR to initiate the process via Refapp.
“Everyone involved in the hiring process is notified when the report is complete and can access this directly via Workable or Refapp.”
“With the templates configured, the reference check process is initiated with the click of a button,” Tamara explains.
“We no longer need to make multiple contact attempts to the candidate and referee; the system drives this for us based on the requirements we set, and we can monitor progress. It’s less resource-intensive than our previous approach, and very time-effective."
"Importantly, there’s been no compromise on quality, correspondence to candidates and referees is professional and personalised, and the integrity of the check is upheld through verification measures and fraudulent activity alerts.”
“Previously, we spent a lot of time trying to reach busy referees, and when doing this up to 80 times, it became a full-time task. In these instances, Refapp has saved us days of work and HR resources.”
She adds, “the system has also eliminated the need for us to record referee details and contact attempts in a separate spreadsheet.”
Turnaround time has improved as well:
“The average turnaround time for references is approximately 1–2 days. With our previous method, the turnaround time varied, at times this could take up to a week, sometimes longer.”
“Part of our HR policy is to have a minimum of two reference checks for each employee. Refapp enables us to customise the number of referees the candidate is required to submit and will notify us once both referees have completed the check”, Tamara explains.
“For some roles, we’re required to ask referees certain questions relating to child safety, Refapp has the option to mark questions as mandatory, thereby requiring a response.”
On the data protection side, “we can control who has access at both a system and reference check project level, and we can also set the parameters for how long data is stored.”
“The system is incredibly user-friendly, and we find that candidates and referees complete their part without any issue or need for guidance from HR. A major benefit to the referee experience is that they’re not being called and interrupted at different times of the day, they have flexibility over when they complete the online form or alternatively, request a phone call at a time convenient to them.”
“Our experience with Refapp has been overwhelmingly positive. We’d confidently recommend it to other organisations looking to streamline recruitment and reduce the burden on HR teams and hiring managers.”
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