About...
As a large private provider of residential education and therapeutic services, Hexagon care operates 80 sites across England for children and supported adults. They work closely with partner organisations to deliver high-quality support that helps build positive futures.
per employee
not weeks
Hexagon Care
Background check experience
Staffing a care organisation includes a lot of unique challenges, from recruitment to checking. At Hexagon Care, there was a big one: a clunky DBS process.
As a provider of residential care services for children, their staff had to have Enhanced DBS checks. With a five-person HR team processing over 250 new employees, it was crucial that the process worked smoothly.
When new candidates came to interview at one of Hexagon’s 80 sites across the UK, they’d bring their documents for a DBS check with them. The hiring managers would send the documents through to the HR team at the head office — but often, key documents would be incorrect or missing.
If that happened, candidates would need to go back to the site they interviewed at and deliver updated documents in person, all for the hiring manager to repeat the process of sending it to the head office. It was, needless to say, a bit slow.
Because of manual admin, it took the team on average almost eight days just to start the DBS check. Once it was processing, it took just under 29 days to process, leading to an average turnaround time of 36.2 days.
This meant delayed starts and drop-outs. Candidates would verbally accept offers and then find other roles when DBS checks dragged on. Key staff couldn’t start when they were needed without the required checks, and it was clear that something had to give.
Hexagon Care was specifically looking for a digital identity service provider (IDSP) to remove the manual work from their DBS process. They needed:
- Faster Enhanced DBS processing times
- A DBS process that kept their candidates happy
- Less back-and-forth between candidates, hiring managers, and the HR team
When they found Zinc, they were skeptical about the promised turnaround times. But they gave it a try — and liked what they found.
Results
With Zinc, the total time to run an Enhanced DBS went from 36 days to just under 9, according to an internal report their HR team ran for senior leadership.
“The IDSP process has been a gamechanger, because we no longer need to manually verify, saving a lot of time,” said Zander Loftus, recruitment manager. “If they don’t bring everything with them to the interview, it’s not a huge problem because they can still get a DBS in processing — which is the thing that normally takes the longest.”
The team found that they were saving valuable time on manual verifications for DBS, since they didn’t have to manually add passport or driving license numbers. And if candidates didn’t have either of those documents, they could still get started on the DBS checks without needing manual intervention.
They started with the assumption that all DBS providers did more or less the same thing. But as time went on, it was clear that Zinc was different.
“Zinc changed everything overnight for us,” said Zander. After starting a trial in January, they didn’t expect to see so many checks coming back quickly. In April, more DBS checks were returned in less than a day than those returned in 2+ weeks.
Now, they can get enhanced DBS checks started faster to prevent candidates from looking elsewhere. As time goes on, results keep speeding up the recruitment cycle.
“It reduces spend on agency or any overtime for other staff as well,” said Zander. “It helps our candidate offering by being able to get them in quicker. There’s less fallout, better candidate experience, and it’s obviously more financially secure for the candidate.”
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