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Woolworths New Zealand serves over 2.5 million customers every week and has over 20,000 employees spanning stores, distribution centres and support offices. Operating in a highly competitive market with large hiring volumes, having efficient and streamlined recruitment processes is essential to ensure Woolworths can attract top talent. The grocery retailer is also passionate about promoting and ensuring equal access to employment opportunities and fostering inclusivity within their hiring processes.
"Checkmate has provided us with the capability to deliver a more efficient and accessible hiring process for everyone. It has truly bridged a crucial gap for us. Their assistance ensures we maintain an accessible and expedient process across the country, fulfilling the essential needs of every recruitment space." - Lara from Woolworths.
Amidst the challenges of COVID-19 in 2020, Woolworths New Zealand faced an unprecedented demand for their products and services. In order to bolster their online capabilities and meet the growing need for grocery products, particularly home deliveries during the lockdown period, Woolworths began looking for a solution. They needed a way to improve their recruitment and hiring processes in order to rapidly onboard well over hundreds of new employees. They also wanted to ensure that their application process was user-friendly and accessible to everyone, regardless of technology access or proficiency. This required a comprehensive overhaul of their recruitment processes.
“Inclusivity is paramount to us. We work across such a diverse landscape and we want to create a candidate experience that is efficient and accessible for everyone.”
Woolworths made the decision to partner with Checkmate in order to streamline their recruitment process. As a result of moving to cloud-based HR systems, Woolworths reduced their time-to-hire by 24 hours per application, while still ensuring rigorous background checks and verification processes to uphold workplace safety standards.
“When you’re hiring 200 to 300 new employees per week, saving one day per person ends up being quite a lot of time,” says Lara from the Woolworths talent team.
By partnering with Checkmate, Woolworths was able to address a major and immediate need within their recruitment processes.
Through their strategic partnership with Checkmate, Woolworths’ dramatic reduction in their recruitment timeline meant they were about to meet the surge in demand and onboard the much-needed new employees swiftly and efficiently. By streamlining these processes, Woolworths was able to optimise their operations and continue delivering exceptional service to their customers during a challenging period.
By implementing Checkmate’s solution, Woolworths was not only able to address their immediate hiring needs but was also able to position themselves for future long-term success in their recruitment efforts.
Inclusion in the technology space can be a challenge but it is an extremely important area to address. “We're navigating such a large recruitment landscape where we're hiring people from all walks of life. We need to make sure that our process is really accessible to everybody, no matter where they are in the country or when they are in their life.”
The integration of Checkmate’s platform empowered Woolworths to ensure accessibility in their recruitment process. By eliminating barriers, such as the need for specialised equipment like computers or scanners, candidates are now able to engage with Woolworths’ hiring process using their preferred device. This ensures Woolworths can cater to candidates from diverse backgrounds and circumstances.
With this new accessibility-driven approach, Woolworths was able to enhance their candidate experience, ensure a continual commitment to inclusivity and diversity in their workforce and make the process more user-friendly.
“Before using Checkmate, when we moved the candidate to the pre-employment stage it was very clunky and hard. We had to take screenshots to create instructions because it was so difficult for candidates to navigate. Many candidates did not progress because of this. Checkmate is the first time we’ve partnered with something outside of the box.”
In collaborating with Checkmate, Woolworths was also able to facilitate the seamless implementation of Covid-19 vaccine verification processes into their recruitment workflow during the pandemic.The flexibility and responsiveness of the Checkmate team ensured Woolworths was able to swiftly adapt and integrate new procedures with minimal disruption to their day-to-day operations.
“I'm always pleasantly surprised at how flexible the [Checkmate] treatment team are. We came to them and said we needed to do the verification and they said, we can absolutely build something that will work for that.”
If you’re looking for a way to reduce hiring risks and save time and money without compromising on your priorities and commitments to candidates, check out Checkmate. At Checkmate, we can help you create a secure and seamless candidate experience. We offer an easy, automated and simplified solution to managing candidate reference checking and pre-employment screening, helping to give you a smoother and more efficient hiring process.
Ready to improve your hiring process and streamline your candidate experience? Let’s talk.
