The Customer

YMCA South Australia (The Y) is a not-for-profit community organisation and the first YMCA established in Australia 175 years ago. With over 1,200 employees and a reach of nearly 2 million visitors annually, the Y supports local communities through a diverse range of services—from early learning and out-of-school care to aquatics, fitness, gymnastics, and allied health. At the heart of it all is a strong commitment to safeguarding, wellbeing, and creating positive community impact.

The Challenge: A large casual workforce, high compliance, and everything done by hand 

With a large casual workforce and operations spanning multiple service areas, the Y is in a constant cycle of recruitment. The team faced mounting pressure to onboard candidates efficiently while meeting strict child safety and licensing requirements—especially the need for consistent, reliable, documented reference checks. 

And to complicate things? With no ATS, their entire recruitment and onboarding process was labour intensive and time consuming. Chasing referees was just another task in a long list of tasks.

“Before Checkmate, we were juggling manual phone references. Managers had to chase down referees, which meant lots of back and forth and inconsistent results,” explained Teertha, People and Culture Advisor.

As the team scaled up, it became clear they needed a more efficient, centralised solution to meet compliance requirements without overloading hiring managers or the HR team. Without consistency in the reference checking process, the risk of missing critical safeguarding information was too high—especially in an environment working with children and vulnerable people. A manual, ad hoc approach simply wasn’t fit for purpose.

The Solution: Phone free reference checks in one quick click

Checkmate was introduced as the default reference checking tool for YMCA South Australia. Today, roughly 90% of references are completed through the platform, with phone-based checks reserved only for senior roles or unique cases.

“Checkmate is the first step in our onboarding process,” said Abigail, Recruitment and Rostering Officer. “Once we know a candidate meets our initial pre-screen safeguarding checks, we send the Checkmate request right away.”

The team values Checkmate’s ability to provide:

• consistent and compliant reference checks
  
  
• mandatory safeguarding questions built into every form
  
  
• a faster process that cuts out the phone tag with referees
  
  
• a clear audit trail for licensing and compliance purposes.
  
  

“It cuts out the middle layer and gives us full visibility. The process sits with HR now instead of managers, which makes it smoother for everyone,” Teertha added.

The Results: Time saved. Risks reduced. Standards raised.

Checkmate’s user-friendly, responsive platform enables referees to submit references quickly and when convenient for them. For the team, it means there’s no more waiting for the stars to align for a perfectly timed phone call!

✓ Time on admin saved across the board
HR and managers no longer spend hours chasing down references. The team now receives clean, standardised reports in real-time, meaning they can crack on with the onboarding process.

“We’ve got over 1,200 employees and a constant stream of hires—Checkmate helps us stay on top of it all,” Hao, People and Culture Coordinator, shared.

✓ Stronger compliance and safeguarding practices
As a child-safe organisation, consistent and reliable reference checks are essential. With built-in mandatory safeguarding questions and reliable tracking, Checkmate helps the Y meet licensing obligations and keep records easily accessible.

✓ Surprising wins: spotting red flags early
Checkmate’s IP address tracking feature was an unexpected security benefit.
“It flagged a few suspicious submissions where the candidate and referee matched. Without that feature, we probably wouldn’t have followed up—and those hires wouldn’t have been right for us,” Abigail noted.

✓ A better experience for referees
“People don’t want to answer phone calls these days, especially from unknown numbers,” Hao said. “With Checkmate, referees can respond when it suits them. It makes their lives easier and gives us better-quality feedback.”

What’s next

Cherishing the time already saved so far, the Y are looking forward to continued enhancements of their recruitment process and candidate experience. With Checkmate’s ongoing support, they can be sure that every new team member helps them realise their commitment to safety, wellbeing, and positive community impact.

“Checkmate just works. It’s efficient, reliable, and helps us meet our obligations without adding extra admin,” Teertha said. “We couldn’t imagine doing recruitment without it.”

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