Ascent Programs, a leading corporate organization overseeing a critical network of residential and wilderness treatment programs for teens and young adults across Utah, has successfully transformed its human resources operations through the strategic implementation of Workable, a comprehensive applicant tracking system. This pivotal shift from a fragmented, decentralized hiring approach to a unified, data-driven system has yielded significant improvements in efficiency, candidate quality, and strategic reporting across its six program sites, which collectively manage a workforce exceeding 600 employees. The adoption of Workable has not only streamlined the recruitment process but also elevated the HR function to a strategic contributor, directly supporting Ascent’s vital mission of delivering quality care.
Ascent Programs: A Deeper Look into Critical Care
Ascent Programs stands as a crucial pillar in the specialized field of youth behavioral health, providing residential and wilderness treatment options designed to address the complex needs of adolescents and young adults. These programs, spread across Utah, offer structured therapeutic environments aimed at fostering growth, healing, and recovery for vulnerable populations. The organization’s commitment to delivering high-quality, impactful care necessitates a robust and highly functional workforce, encompassing a diverse array of professionals. Among its network, Three Peaks Ascent, a wilderness program, notably served as the pilot site for Workable’s initial implementation, demonstrating the platform’s efficacy before its full-scale rollout.
The operational intricacies of Ascent Programs demand a sophisticated HR framework. Corporate-level HR oversight is managed by Jodi Levie, who is responsible for hiring at the central office while collaborating closely with dedicated HR directors embedded within each of the six program sites. This federated structure, while allowing for localized responsiveness, historically presented significant challenges in maintaining enterprise-wide consistency and visibility. The roles Ascent recruits for are incredibly varied and critical to client well-being. Admissions teams are the first point of contact, essential for guiding families through the intake process. Licensed therapists are central to providing evidence-based clinical interventions, managing caseloads, and ensuring continuous, high-quality therapeutic care. Residential staff, who work directly and continuously with clients, represent the organization’s highest-volume hiring need and, due to the demanding nature of direct care, often face the highest turnover rates. Furthermore, specialized positions, such as certified teachers and highly credentialed clinicians, add layers of complexity, especially in tight labor markets where specific qualifications are scarce. The ability to efficiently and effectively recruit for these diverse roles is not merely an administrative task; it is fundamental to Ascent’s capacity to serve its clients and uphold its therapeutic mission.
The Pre-Workable Landscape: A Decentralized Quagmire
Prior to the integration of Workable, Ascent Programs grappled with a deeply decentralized and often inefficient hiring ecosystem. Each of the six program sites operated autonomously, with individual HR directors managing their recruitment efforts independently. This meant that job postings were typically handled through separate, standalone Indeed accounts, with each site solely responsible for payment, posting, interview coordination, and candidate management. The absence of a shared infrastructure resulted in a fragmented landscape characterized by a severe lack of unified data, corporate-level visibility, and standardized processes.
The consequences of this decentralized model were pervasive and detrimental. The hiring process was inherently slower, as the entire burden of each recruitment effort fell squarely on a single individual at each site. This lack of shared resources or centralized support created bottlenecks and extended time-to-hire metrics. Interview questions and evaluation criteria varied significantly from one site to another, leading to inconsistencies in candidate assessment and raising concerns about equitable hiring practices. Collaboration between HR teams and clinical or operational departments was minimal, hindering the alignment of recruitment strategies with programmatic needs. Critically, when hiring challenges emerged – whether localized to a specific program or affecting the entire organization – there was no centralized data to diagnose root causes or inform strategic responses. Jodi Levie starkly noted, "There was no visibility at the corporate level. We weren’t able to report on anything." This data vacuum rendered it impossible for Ascent’s leadership to discern whether recruitment difficulties stemmed from internal process inefficiencies or broader market dynamics, thereby impeding the development of a data-driven strategy essential for organizational scalability and sustained growth. The inability to present concrete hiring metrics to the board of directors also meant that strategic discussions around talent acquisition lacked empirical grounding, relying instead on anecdotal evidence.
The Search for a Unified Solution: Why Workable?
The imperative to transition to a unified hiring solution was driven by two overarching strategic priorities for Ascent Programs: achieving enhanced visibility and bolstering accountability. Organizational leadership recognized the critical need to present hiring performance to the board of directors with concrete data, moving beyond subjective narratives to demonstrate quantifiable progress and identify areas for improvement. Simultaneously, the organization required a robust platform capable of introducing consistency and standardization into a hiring process that, by its very nature, spanned multiple independent sites, each with unique immediate needs but shared overarching objectives.
The journey towards Workable began with a pilot implementation at Three Peaks Ascent, the wilderness program. This strategic decision allowed for a controlled deployment, enabling the HR team to assess the platform’s efficacy and user-friendliness in a real-world setting. As the benefits of the system became increasingly evident at the pilot site, the expansion to the remaining programs gained momentum. For Jodi Levie and her team, the paramount criteria for selecting an applicant tracking system were ease of implementation and measurable organizational impact. Workable demonstrably met both requirements.
Early adopters within the HR team quickly recognized the potential for significant time savings. This tangible benefit served as a powerful catalyst for broader adoption across the sites. Rather than being a top-down mandate, the transition to Workable was largely driven by demonstrated value and positive peer experiences. As Jodi Levie recounted, "Some people get set in their ways, and they don’t like change. But as we talked about how much easier it was making our lives, it grew. Within a year, everyone was saying this is so much better." This organic adoption underscores Workable’s intuitive design and its immediate utility for busy HR professionals. A key factor that further accelerated this widespread adoption was the deliberate decision to extend hiring team access beyond just HR personnel. By empowering more employees – including hiring managers and team leads – with visibility into candidate pipelines for their respective teams and a voice in the selection process, Ascent fostered a sense of ownership. This approach transformed platform adoption from a mere policy compliance task into a perceived benefit, integrating Workable seamlessly into the daily operational workflows of various departments.
Transforming Hiring Operations: Key Outcomes and Metrics
The implementation of Workable at Ascent Programs has catalyzed a profound transformation in its hiring operations, delivering measurable improvements across several critical dimensions. The data, now consistently collected and reported, paints a clear picture of the strategic advantages gained.
Time Savings and Operational Efficiency: A conservative estimate indicates that Workable saves Ascent an average of three to five hours per hire. This reduction in administrative burden is significant across an organization with over 600 employees and a continuous need for recruitment. The savings stem from various automated functionalities: multi-board job distribution allows roles to be posted across numerous platforms simultaneously without manual input for each; self-scheduling features empower candidates to book interviews directly, reducing back-and-forth communication; and integrated candidate texting streamlines communication, ensuring timely updates and engagement. Ascent is actively expanding its use of automated messaging workflows to further enhance consistency and speed in candidate communication, thereby freeing HR professionals to focus on more strategic, value-added tasks rather than repetitive administrative duties.
Enhanced Visibility and Strategic Reporting: One of the most transformative outcomes has been the establishment of corporate-level reporting capabilities, a feature that was entirely absent before Workable. The HR team now systematically tracks key metrics such as time-to-hire, the volume of qualified candidates, and candidate source across all six programs. This rich dataset enables leadership and the board of directors to receive data-driven updates on hiring performance, replacing anecdotal observations with concrete evidence. Jodi Levie highlighted the ease of use of Workable’s reporting features, which have allowed her team to leverage predictive reporting functionality. This capability helps identify patterns in application flow, enabling HR to determine whether a hiring challenge at a specific site is a temporary market fluctuation or indicative of a deeper issue requiring targeted intervention. "We can now report to our board of directors," Levie stated. "We can show them areas of improvement, areas that have improved, and explain why we’re having a challenge in a specific area. We have data to drive our strategies now." This shift from instinct-based decision-making to evidence-based strategy represents a fundamental elevation of the HR function within Ascent Programs, positioning it as a strategic contributor rather than merely an administrative support unit.
Standardization, Compliance, and Equity: A particularly meaningful shift enabled by Workable is the move towards structured and consistent hiring practices across all six programs. Previously, there was no mechanism to ensure that a therapist candidate at one program was evaluated against the same criteria as a therapist candidate at another. With Workable, Ascent has successfully implemented role-specific workflows and standardized interview question sets for every position type, from high-volume residential staff roles to complex clinical positions requiring multiple evaluation stages. This ensures that every candidate for a given role progresses through the identical process, is asked the same set of questions, and is evaluated using consistent criteria. The implications of this standardization extend far beyond mere efficiency. It significantly reduces the risk of inconsistency-driven compliance issues, such as unintentional bias or discriminatory practices, and ensures that all hiring decisions are made on a defensible and equitable basis. "Standardization was huge for us," Levie emphasized. "We’re making sure we avoid any potential discrimination issues by asking the same questions for the same group of people – comparing apples to apples." The platform’s flexibility also allows for customization of workflows by role, incorporating additional steps for intricate clinical hires while maintaining streamlined processes for higher-volume residential positions, thereby achieving standardization without sacrificing the necessary nuance for different job requirements.
Improved Candidate Quality and Experience: Hiring teams across all six programs consistently report a noticeable increase in the number of qualified applicants. This improvement is attributed to a combination of factors: Workable’s multi-board distribution ensures broader reach for job postings, attracting a more diverse and larger pool of candidates. Concurrently, the structured evaluation processes, integrated early into the recruitment funnel, help filter for cultural fit and essential qualifications more effectively, leading to a higher quality of candidates progressing through the stages. On the candidate side, the experience has become seamless and user-friendly. Regardless of whether an applicant originates from Indeed, Ascent’s direct careers page, or referral channels, their information is routed directly into Workable. This eliminates the need for HR to manage multiple platforms or reconcile data across disparate systems, centralizing all candidate information in a single, accessible location. Candidates report an easy and intuitive application process, with no significant complaints regarding their experience. As Jodi Levie noted, "It’s great that it’s all in one place. Someone can apply from Indeed or another platform and it feeds right through to us. Candidates can do what they want, and we still get the information."
Scalability and Future Growth: The successful expansion of Workable from a single pilot program to all six sites underscores its inherent scalability. The platform now provides a unified hiring infrastructure that supports an organization with over 600 employees, demonstrating its capacity to grow alongside Ascent Programs. This unified system is critical for an organization like Ascent, where staffing levels directly correlate with client capacity. The ability to rapidly scale recruitment efforts when new clients are admitted into programs is an operational necessity. Workable provides the robust infrastructure to meet these fluctuating demands without compromising on process quality or the integrity of hiring decisions. This foundation is crucial for Ascent’s ongoing growth and its ability to expand its reach and impact within the behavioral health sector.
The Strategic Elevation of HR
The transformation at Ascent Programs extends beyond operational efficiencies; it represents a significant elevation of the human resources function itself. By providing robust reporting capabilities and standardizing critical processes, Workable has empowered HR leaders like Jodi Levie to move beyond purely administrative tasks and contribute strategically to the organization’s mission and growth objectives. The ability to present data-driven insights to the board of directors not only enhances the credibility of the HR department but also enables informed decision-making at the highest levels of the organization. This strategic role is particularly vital in the behavioral health sector, where the quality of every hire directly impacts the well-being and therapeutic outcomes of vulnerable youth. The insights gained from Workable’s analytics allow Ascent to proactively identify talent gaps, optimize recruitment channels, and refine its employer brand, all of which are critical components of long-term organizational success.
Looking Ahead: Continuous Improvement and Mission Alignment
As Three Peaks Ascent and its sister programs continue their growth trajectory, Ascent is committed to deliberately expanding its utilization of Workable’s advanced capabilities. Future plans include further leveraging automated messaging and AI screening functionalities to make existing workflows even more intentional and efficient. This continuous commitment to maximizing the return on their HR technology investment underscores Ascent’s dedication to operational excellence. For an organization managing complex clinical hiring at scale, where the caliber of each individual hire directly influences the safety, care, and therapeutic progress of the teens and young adults they serve, this pursuit of continuous improvement is not merely incidental; it is central to their core mission.
Workable has provided Ascent Programs with a robust and adaptable foundation built on visibility, standardization, and speed. Upon this solid infrastructure, the HR team is actively constructing a hiring function that is genuinely strategic, agile, and fully capable of supporting both the organization’s ambitious growth plans and its unwavering commitment to its life-changing mission. This strategic partnership between Ascent Programs and Workable exemplifies how modern HR technology can be a catalyst for organizational transformation, particularly in sectors where human capital directly translates into human impact.
