Ascent Programs, a leading corporate organization overseeing a network of residential and wilderness treatment programs for teens and young adults across Utah, has successfully revolutionized its talent acquisition process through the strategic implementation of Workable, a unified hiring platform. This transformation has yielded a significant reduction in administrative burden, elevated candidate quality, enhanced organizational visibility, and established a consistent, defensible hiring framework across its extensive network, which supports over 600 employees. The transition marks a pivotal shift from a decentralized, opaque recruitment model to a centralized, data-informed strategy that directly supports the organizationâs mission of delivering critical care and fostering growth.
Ascent Programs: A Critical Mission in Behavioral Health
Ascent Programs stands as the corporate backbone for vital residential and wilderness treatment initiatives, primarily serving adolescents and young adults navigating complex behavioral health challenges in Utah. Its network includes renowned facilities like Three Peaks Ascent, a wilderness program that spearheaded the initial Workable pilot. The organizationâs commitment to therapeutic excellence necessitates a robust and stable workforce, encompassing a wide spectrum of roles from clinical therapists and certified teachers to admissions teams and high-volume residential staff. These positions are not merely jobs; they are integral to the continuum of care, directly impacting the well-being and progress of vulnerable clients. The unique demands of this sector, including stringent licensing requirements for clinical staff and the challenging nature of residential care, often lead to competitive hiring landscapes and higher turnover rates, making efficient and effective talent acquisition paramount to operational success and client safety.
Overseeing these intricate HR operations at the corporate level is Jodi Levie, who manages hiring for the central office while collaborating closely with embedded HR directors at each program site. This dual structure inherently demands a delicate balance: local flexibility to address site-specific needs coupled with enterprise-wide consistency to maintain quality, compliance, and strategic alignment. Prior to the adoption of Workable, achieving this equilibrium proved to be a formidable challenge, often resulting in fragmented efforts and a lack of overarching strategic coherence.
The Pre-Workable Era: Fragmented Processes and Opaque Outcomes
Before the integration of Workable, Ascent Programsâ hiring methodology was characterized by profound decentralization. Each of the six program sites operated with near-complete autonomy in its recruitment efforts. Individual HR directors managed their own job postings, primarily leveraging standalone Indeed accounts, and independently handled every facet of the hiring lifecycleâfrom payment processing for job ads to interview coordination and candidate management. This siloed approach meant a complete absence of shared infrastructure, unified data repositories, or corporate-level visibility into the organizationâs collective hiring performance.
The consequences of this fragmented system were predictable and far-reaching. The entire process was significantly slower, as the administrative burden for each hire rested solely on a single individual. This inefficiency was exacerbated by a lack of standardized practices: interview questions varied widely from site to site, offering no guarantee of consistent evaluation criteria across programs. Collaboration between HR personnel and clinical or operational teams was limited, hindering a holistic approach to talent selection. Critically, when hiring challenges emergedâwhether isolated to a specific site or impacting the entire organizationâthere was no available data to diagnose the root cause, track performance metrics like time-to-hire, or inform a strategic response. As Jodi Levie aptly observed, "There was no visibility at the corporate level. We werenât able to report on anything." This profound lack of insight rendered it impossible to build the kind of data-driven strategy essential for an organization like Ascent, which was poised for growth and required scalable solutions. The inability to distinguish between a process problem and a market challenge, for instance, left leadership operating on instinct rather than evidence, an unsustainable model for strategic expansion.
The Catalyst for Change: A Quest for Visibility and Accountability
The imperative to adopt a unified hiring solution at Ascent Programs was fundamentally driven by two strategic priorities: enhanced visibility and robust accountability. Corporate leadership recognized the urgent need for a mechanism to present hiring performance to the board of directors not as anecdotal observations but as quantifiable, data-backed insights. Simultaneously, the organization required a platform capable of injecting much-needed consistency into a hiring process that, by its very nature, spanned multiple independent operational sites.
The journey began with a pilot implementation at Three Peaks Ascent, the organizationâs wilderness program. This strategic choice allowed for a contained testing environment, demonstrating the platformâs capabilities before a broader rollout. The benefits quickly became apparent, paving the way for gradual expansion. For Jodi Levie and her team, the critical criteria for success were ease of implementation and demonstrable organizational impact. Workable delivered on both fronts. Early adopters within the HR team almost immediately recognized the platformâs potential for significant time savings, a compelling internal driver for change. As this reality permeated across the various sites, adoption followed organicallyânot as a top-down mandate, but as a direct response to demonstrated value. This bottom-up acceptance was a testament to the platformâs user-friendliness and tangible benefits. "Some people get set in their ways, and they donât like change," Levie noted, "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."
A key factor accelerating this widespread adoption was a deliberate decision to expand hiring team access beyond the confines of HR. By bringing more employees into the recruitment processâgranting them visibility into candidates for their own teams and empowering them with a voice in who they would be working alongsideâAscent cultivated an ownership dynamic. This approach transformed platform adoption from a mere policy compliance exercise into a perceived operational benefit, fostering greater engagement and buy-in from various departments.
Transformative Outcomes: Efficiency and Time Savings
The implementation of Workable has ushered in a new era of efficiency for Ascent Programs, most notably in the realm of time savings. The platform is estimated to save an average of three to five hours per hire, a conservative figure that translates into a substantial reduction in administrative burden across a six-site organization managing over 600 employees. This efficiency gain is critical for an organization where staffing levels directly correlate with client capacity and the ability to respond swiftly to demand fluctuations. When new clients are anticipated, Ascent can now scale its hiring efforts rapidly without compromising process quality.
The time savings are attributable to several key features. Workableâs multi-board job distribution capability means that roles are automatically posted across numerous platforms, reaching a wider candidate pool without the need for manual posting on each site individually. This eliminates hours previously spent by HR directors duplicating efforts across various job boards. Furthermore, features like self-scheduling for interviews and integrated candidate texting have dramatically streamlined communication workflows. The organization is also actively expanding its use of automated messaging workflows, aiming to introduce even greater consistency and speed to candidate interactions, ensuring timely follow-ups and reducing the administrative overhead associated with manual communication. This automation not only frees up HR professionals but also significantly improves the candidate experience, contributing to Ascentâs employer brand.
Elevating Quality and Standardization: A Foundation for Fairness and Compliance
Perhaps one of the most profound shifts enabled by Workable is the move toward structured and consistent hiring practices across all six programs. In the past, there was no reliable mechanism to ensure that a therapist candidate at one program was evaluated against the same criteria as a therapist candidate at another. This inconsistency carried inherent risks, including potential biases and difficulties in defending hiring decisions.
With Workable, Ascent has meticulously built role-specific workflows and standardized interview question sets for each position type. This ranges from high-volume residential staff roles to complex clinical positions that necessitate multiple evaluation stages and specialized assessments. The outcome is a truly equitable process: every candidate applying for the same role now navigates the identical process, is posed the same questions, and is evaluated against the same predefined criteria.
The implications of this standardization extend far beyond mere efficiency. It significantly reduces the risk of inconsistency-driven compliance issues, a critical concern in a highly regulated sector like behavioral health. By ensuring that hiring decisions are made on a defensible and equitable basis, Ascent mitigates legal risks and strengthens its commitment to fair employment practices. As Jodi Levie emphasized, "Standardization was huge for us. Weâre making sure we avoid any potential discrimination issues by asking the same questions for the same group of people â comparing apples to apples."
Moreover, the platformâs flexibility allows for the customization of workflows by role. This means Ascent can add necessary steps for more complex clinical hires, such as license verification or specialized assessments, while keeping the process streamlined and efficient for higher-volume residential roles. This nuanced approach ensures that standardization does not flatten the unique requirements and complexities that different positions demand, providing both consistency and adaptability. The hiring teams across all six programs have consistently reported seeing a higher caliber of qualified applicants, a direct reflection of both broader candidate distribution and the more structured evaluation processes that effectively filter for fit earlier in the recruitment pipeline.
Strategic Insight: Reporting That Finally Reaches the Boardroom
For Ascent Programs, the most transformative impact of Workable has been the newfound ability to generate comprehensive reports and harness data for strategic decision-making. Before Workable, the corporate HR team operated in a data vacuum, making it impossible to accurately assess hiring performance. Now, the team routinely tracks crucial metrics such as time to hire, qualified candidate volume, and candidate source across all six programs. This rich dataset is actively utilized to inform decisions at both operational and strategic levels.
The reporting features within Workable are, in Jodi Levieâs words, "easy to use," fostering greater adoption and utilization among the HR team. Furthermore, the team has discovered immense value in the platformâs predictive reporting functionality. This feature helps identify emerging patterns in application flow, enabling proactive interventions. For instance, when a specific site experiences difficulty in filling a particular role, HR can now consult historical data to discern whether the challenge represents a temporary market dip, a seasonal fluctuation, or a more persistent issue that warrants a targeted strategic intervention, such as adjusting compensation or diversifying sourcing channels.
This shift from reactive, instinct-based problem-solving to proactive, evidence-driven strategy represents a significant elevation of the HR function within Ascent Programs. "We can now report to our board of directors," Levie proudly states. "We can show them areas of improvement, areas that have improved, and explain why weâre having a challenge in a specific area. We have data to drive our strategies now." This capability transforms HR from a purely administrative support role into a strategic contributor, directly informing leadership on critical organizational health and growth metrics. It provides the board with tangible proof of operational efficiency and strategic foresight in talent management, fostering greater confidence and alignment.
A Seamless Candidate Experience That Works
On the candidate side, Workable has facilitated a remarkably seamless and intuitive experience. Regardless of whether applicants discover roles through Indeed, Ascentâs direct careers page, or referral channels, their information is routed directly and efficiently into the Workable platform. This eliminates the need for HR to manage multiple disparate platforms or reconcile data across various systems, ensuring that all candidate information resides in a single, centralized location.
This unified approach significantly reduces potential points of friction for applicants. Candidates find the application process straightforward and user-friendly, and the organization has not encountered any meaningful complaints about the experience. The convenience for candidates, coupled with the efficiency for HR, contributes positively to Ascentâs employer brand and helps attract top talent in a competitive market. The ability for candidates to apply through their preferred channel while Ascentâs HR team maintains a single source of truth is a win-win, optimizing both the applicant journey and internal HR operations.
Broader Impact and Future Outlook: Building on a Strategic Foundation
The strategic transformation of Ascent Programsâ hiring function has had far-reaching implications beyond mere operational efficiency. For an organization dedicated to the well-being of teens and young adults, where the quality and stability of every hire directly impact client outcomes, this commitment to continuous improvement is not ancillary; it is foundational to its mission. A more stable, highly qualified workforce translates directly into enhanced continuity of care, improved therapeutic relationships, and ultimately, more positive outcomes for the vulnerable individuals Ascent serves. Reduced staff turnover, a common challenge in residential care, minimizes disruption for clients and allows for deeper, more consistent therapeutic engagement.
As Three Peaks Ascent and its sister programs continue their trajectory of growth, Ascent is deliberately expanding its utilization of Workableâs advanced capabilities. Particular focus is being placed on integrating automated messaging and AI screening functionalities to further refine existing workflows and maximize the return on the robust infrastructure already in place. These enhancements promise to bring even greater intentionality and precision to the hiring process, allowing for more efficient identification of best-fit candidates and freeing HR professionals to focus on higher-value strategic initiatives.
In essence, Workable has provided Ascent Programs with a critical foundation: unparalleled visibility into its hiring landscape, robust standardization across its diverse network, and enhanced speed in its recruitment efforts. What the dedicated team at Ascent is meticulously building upon this foundation is a genuinely strategic hiring functionâone that is not only capable of supporting the organizationâs ambitious growth objectives but is also deeply intertwined with and directly contributes to its profound mission of providing life-changing care. The journey from fragmented, opaque processes to a unified, data-driven talent acquisition strategy stands as a testament to Ascent Programs’ commitment to operational excellence and its unwavering dedication to the clients it serves.
