Ascent Programs, a leading network of residential and wilderness treatment programs for teens and young adults, has achieved a profound overhaul of its talent acquisition strategy through the comprehensive implementation of Workable, a modern applicant tracking system. This strategic adoption has not only streamlined recruitment operations across its six distinct sites but has also delivered critical improvements in corporate visibility, hiring standardization, and candidate quality, fundamentally reshaping the organization’s approach to workforce development. The initiative has resulted in an estimated three to five hours saved per hire, the establishment of corporate-level reporting where none previously existed, and a unified hiring infrastructure now supporting over 600 employees.
Ascent Programs: Nurturing Growth in Challenging Environments
At its core, Ascent Programs is the corporate entity overseeing a vital network of therapeutic and educational programs situated across Utah. These programs specialize in providing residential and wilderness treatment for adolescents and young adults grappling with complex behavioral and mental health challenges. One prominent example is Three Peaks Ascent, the wilderness program that served as the initial pilot site for the Workable implementation. The nature of Ascent’s mission — providing intensive, round-the-clock care to vulnerable populations — places an extraordinary emphasis on the quality and stability of its workforce. Staffing levels directly correlate with client capacity and the overall efficacy of treatment, making robust and efficient hiring processes not merely an HR function but a critical operational imperative.
The organizational structure of Ascent Programs involves a delicate balance: corporate HR, led by Jodi Levie, manages overarching hiring strategies and corporate roles, while embedded HR directors at each program site handle the day-to-day recruitment needs. This model inherently demands both enterprise-wide consistency for compliance and brand integrity, alongside the local flexibility necessary to address the unique challenges and market conditions of individual sites.
The spectrum of roles within Ascent Programs is broad and diverse, each presenting its own recruitment complexities. Admissions teams are crucial for initial client intake, requiring individuals with strong interpersonal and organizational skills. Therapists, including licensed professionals, are indispensable for delivering quality clinical care and managing caseloads, often necessitating specific credentials and experience in a competitive market. Residential staff, who provide continuous, direct supervision and support to clients, represent the highest-volume hiring need and, due to the demanding nature of the work, often face the highest turnover rates. Furthermore, specialized roles, such as certified teachers, introduce additional layers of complexity, particularly in tight labor markets or when niche qualifications are required. The sheer volume and specialized nature of these roles, combined with the decentralized structure, posed significant hurdles to maintaining a cohesive and effective hiring strategy prior to the Workable integration.
The Pre-Workable Era: A Labyrinth of Decentralization
Before the advent of a unified solution, Ascent Programs’ hiring landscape was characterized by extreme decentralization and operational silos. Each of the six program sites operated as an independent recruitment hub. Individual HR directors managed their own job postings, predominantly through standalone accounts on platforms like Indeed. This meant that every aspect of the recruitment lifecycle — from allocating budget for job advertisements and creating postings to coordinating interviews and managing candidate communications — was handled autonomously at the local level. There was a conspicuous absence of shared infrastructure, a unified database, or any mechanism for corporate-level oversight.
The ramifications of this fragmented approach were predictable and far-reaching. The recruitment process was inherently slower, as the entire administrative and evaluative burden for each hire rested on a single individual at a specific site. Interview questions and evaluation criteria often varied significantly between sites, leading to inconsistencies in candidate assessment and a lack of equitable benchmarking. Collaboration between HR personnel and the clinical or operational teams was limited, hindering a holistic approach to talent acquisition. Perhaps most critically, when hiring difficulties emerged, whether localized to a specific program or indicative of broader organizational trends, there was no centralized data to diagnose the root cause or formulate an informed response.
Jodi Levie, overseeing corporate HR operations, vividly recounted the challenges: "There was no visibility at the corporate level. We weren’t able to report on anything." This lack of insight rendered strategic planning impossible. For instance, if a particular site struggled to fill therapist roles, the corporate team had no data to discern whether it was a localized process inefficiency, a specific market challenge, or an issue with candidate sourcing. Without this foundational data, Ascent Programs was effectively operating in the dark, unable to build the data-driven strategies essential for scalable growth and sustained operational excellence. The inability to present quantifiable hiring performance to the board of directors meant that critical talent acquisition insights remained anecdotal, preventing a truly strategic elevation of the HR function.
The Strategic Imperative: Demanding Visibility and Accountability
The decision to seek a unified hiring solution for Ascent Programs was driven by two paramount priorities: the urgent need for enhanced visibility and improved accountability. Corporate leadership recognized the imperative to present hiring performance to the board of directors not through subjective anecdotes, but through verifiable, data-backed insights. Concurrently, the organization needed a robust platform capable of introducing consistency into a hiring process that, by its very nature, was distributed across multiple independent operational sites.
The journey began with a pilot implementation at Three Peaks Ascent, the wilderness program. The choice of Workable as the preferred solution was heavily influenced by its reputation for ease of implementation and its potential for substantial organizational impact. For Jodi Levie and her team, these were non-negotiable criteria. The initial success at Three Peaks Ascent quickly demonstrated the platform’s value, paving the way for a phased rollout across the entire network.
Early adopters within the HR team at the pilot site were swift to recognize the immediate and tangible benefits, particularly the significant time savings Workable offered. As this reality permeated across the other sites, adoption followed a more organic trajectory, driven not by a top-down mandate, but by the demonstrated value and practical advantages perceived by the users themselves. Levie noted, "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 speaks to the platform’s intuitive design and its ability to genuinely alleviate administrative burdens.
A crucial factor that accelerated the widespread adoption of Workable was a deliberate strategic decision to expand hiring team access beyond the confines of the HR department. By empowering more employees – particularly hiring managers and team leads – with direct visibility into candidate pipelines for their respective teams and a voice in the selection process, Ascent cultivated a sense of ownership and involvement. This approach transformed platform adoption from a mere policy directive into a perceived benefit, fostering collaboration and accountability throughout the organization. The board of directors, previously reliant on qualitative updates, could now anticipate robust, data-driven reports, enabling more informed governance and strategic resource allocation. Site HR directors, initially operating in isolation, quickly became advocates, valuing the newfound efficiencies and reduced administrative burden, while hiring managers appreciated the improved quality of applicants and a streamlined process that allowed them to focus on evaluation rather than logistics.
Transformative Outcomes: Data-Driven Excellence and Equity
The implementation of Workable has ushered in a new era of efficiency and strategic clarity for Ascent Programs, yielding measurable improvements across several critical dimensions:
1. Unprecedented Time Savings:
One of the most immediate and impactful benefits has been the significant reduction in administrative time. Workable is estimated to save three to five hours per hire across various stages of the recruitment process, including research, outreach, and coordination. Considering Ascent Programs supports over 600 employees and likely undertakes a substantial number of hires annually, particularly given the high-volume and turnover rates in residential care roles (even a conservative estimate of 20% annual turnover suggests over 120 hires per year), this translates into a staggering organizational saving. At the lower end, 120 hires multiplied by 3 hours saved per hire equates to at least 360 administrative hours reclaimed annually, allowing HR professionals and hiring managers to redirect their efforts toward more strategic initiatives, candidate engagement, and employee development. This reduction in administrative burden has been transformative, particularly for HR directors embedded at individual sites who previously bore the full weight of the hiring process.
2. Enhanced Corporate Visibility and Strategic Reporting:
Prior to Workable, the concept of corporate-level reporting on hiring metrics was non-existent. The new system has democratized data, providing the corporate HR team with real-time insights into key performance indicators such as time-to-hire, qualified candidate volume, and candidate source across all six programs. This data is no longer merely descriptive but actively informs operational adjustments and strategic decision-making. Jodi Levie emphasized the profound shift: "We can now report to our board of directors. 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 capability has elevated the HR function from a largely administrative support role to a strategic contributor, equipped to provide evidence-based recommendations to the highest levels of the organization. Furthermore, Workable’s predictive reporting functionality helps identify patterns in application flow, enabling proactive interventions when a site struggles to fill a particular role, distinguishing between temporary market fluctuations and systemic issues.
3. Standardization That Protects and Improves:
The move towards structured, consistent hiring across all six programs represents one of Workable’s most meaningful contributions. Previously, there was no guarantee that a therapist candidate at one program was evaluated against the same criteria as a candidate for an identical role at another. Workable allowed Ascent to build role-specific workflows and standardized interview question sets for every position type, from high-volume residential staff to complex clinical roles requiring multi-stage evaluations. Every candidate for the same position now navigates an identical process, is asked the same questions, and is assessed against uniform criteria. Levie underscored the importance of this shift: "Standardization was huge for us. 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." Beyond efficiency, this standardization significantly reduces the risk of inconsistency-driven compliance issues and ensures that hiring decisions are made on a defensible, equitable, and transparent basis. The flexibility to customize workflows, adding steps for specialized clinical hires while streamlining processes for high-volume roles, allowed for standardization without compromising the nuanced requirements of different positions.
4. Elevated Candidate Quality and Expanded Pools:
Hiring teams across all six programs consistently report a noticeable improvement in the quality of applicants they are now encountering. This enhancement is a direct result of several Workable features. The platform’s multi-board job distribution capability ensures that job postings reach a wider, more diverse candidate pool across various online platforms without requiring manual posting on each site individually. Concurrently, the implementation of structured evaluation processes, integrated within Workable, enables earlier and more effective filtering for candidate fit, allowing hiring managers to engage with a more pre-qualified selection of individuals. This dual approach of broader reach and sharper focus significantly enhances the overall caliber of candidates.
5. Robust Scalability and Unified Infrastructure:
The initial success of Workable at Three Peaks Ascent demonstrated its scalability, leading to its full deployment across all six programs within a year. This expansion has created a unified hiring infrastructure that now seamlessly supports an organization with over 600 employees. This singular, cohesive system stands in stark contrast to the previous fragmented landscape, providing a consistent operational framework regardless of site-specific needs. The rapid and full adoption across all sites within the first year underscores the platform’s user-friendliness and its immediate perceived value to HR directors and hiring managers, who now operate from a single source of truth for all recruitment activities.
Operational Efficiency and a Seamless Candidate Experience
For an organization like Ascent Programs, where client capacity is directly tied to staffing levels, the ability to recruit swiftly and effectively when demand surges is a fundamental operational necessity. Workable provides the technological infrastructure to meet these demands without compromising the quality or integrity of the hiring process. Features such as multi-board job distribution eliminate the laborious task of manually posting roles across multiple platforms, saving significant time and ensuring wider reach. Self-scheduling tools and candidate texting functionalities have streamlined communication, reducing administrative back-and-forth and enhancing the candidate experience. Ascent is also actively expanding its use of automated messaging workflows to introduce even greater consistency and speed into candidate interactions, ensuring timely updates and engagement.
On the candidate side, the experience of applying to Ascent Programs has become remarkably seamless. Whether an applicant originates from Indeed, the organization’s direct careers page, or through referral channels, their information is routed directly and efficiently into Workable. This eliminates the need for HR teams to manage disparate platforms or reconcile data across multiple systems, consolidating all candidate information into a single, accessible location. This integration ensures that the application process is user-friendly and devoid of friction, a critical factor in attracting top talent in a competitive market. Candidates consistently find the application process straightforward, with no meaningful complaints reported regarding the experience.
Looking Ahead: Continuous Improvement and Mission Alignment
As Three Peaks Ascent and its sister programs continue their trajectory of growth, Ascent Programs is committed to deliberately expanding its utilization of Workable’s advanced capabilities. Future plans include a deeper dive into automated messaging and AI screening functionalities. These enhancements are aimed at making existing workflows even more intentional, efficient, and data-driven, thereby maximizing the return on the robust infrastructure already in place.
For an organization managing clinical hiring at scale, where the quality and compassion of every hire directly impact the well-being of the vulnerable teens and young adults they serve, this commitment to continuous improvement is not merely an operational goal; it is central to their mission. Workable has provided Ascent Programs with an indispensable foundation: unparalleled visibility, crucial standardization, and vital speed. Upon this solid technological bedrock, the Ascent team is actively constructing a hiring function that is genuinely strategic, agile, and fully capable of supporting both the organization’s ambitious growth objectives and its profound mission to provide healing and hope. The transformation underscores a broader industry trend towards leveraging technology to not only optimize HR processes but to reinforce core organizational values and improve critical human services.
