This article is sponsored by Arena Analytics. In this Voices interview, Home Health Care News sits down with Arena Analytics CEO Myra Norton to learn how her team is reshaping the labor and talent landscape for home-based care, along with other industries. Norton explains how organizations can improve the hiring process to match open positions with qualified talent hiring managers may have overlooked due to unconscious and historical biases — and the ripple effect those hirings can have on the community at large.
What career experiences do you most draw from in your role today?
Myra Norton: I’m a mathematician by training. That part of my career influences the work I do today, leading a tech company that leverages AI and predictive analytics and learning.
I then taught at the college level for a number of years. I use that experience in my professional life on a daily basis to help others solve problems, grow and develop. More recently, I spent the last 15 years running early-stage, high-growth companies. I have developed a lot of muscle around resiliency, creativity and problem solving. I love the work that I do.
Arena Analytics was founded in 2015. What did founder Michael Rosenbaum see in the market that led him to found the company? What is the company’s mission?
Norton: Mike is an academic as well. We both talk about being “recovering academics.” He taught law and economics at Harvard, and did some work for the Clinton White House in the late ’90s around technology and labor policy.
He saw that the labor market was fundamentally broken because we make hiring and promotion decisions around signals in resumes, people’s pedigree, and our own limited, narrow experiences. As a result, large swaths of the population are not afforded opportunities where they could really thrive. We often end up hiring people who look good on paper but aren’t right for the role. Mike’s idea was to use large amounts of data to thwart this problem. We can use data to match people to roles where they will thrive.
When we started Arena, we were focused exclusively on health care. Industry leaders came to us and said, “Can you help us? We have this amazing challenge where a large percentage of our workforce leave our organizations every year. We’ve got some roles where 40%, 50%, 60% of our new hires don’t make it a year. That not only costs us a lot of money, but it also impacts the quality of care we can provide to patients, residents, and people in their homes.”
That’s why we built Arena originally in the health care space, and we’ve had great success there. But we always wanted to expand into other industries, and last year we entered hospitality, specifically the restaurant space. We’re also in talks with financial services companies and folks in retail and manufacturing, because the problem of building better workforces is one that spans industries.
Arena views the interview process as the starting point for staff retention because, as you noted, the interview process is where talent evaluation begins. There are so many assessments out there that claim to help with staff retention. How is what Arena does different?
Norton: We focus on predicting the outcomes that individuals are likely to achieve in a variety of specific job circumstances. Whether that is the role, organization, location, department or even the shift, Arena champions the process of precision-hiring. It’s matching people to roles where they will thrive and connecting people to meaningful work. What differentiates the way our platform works is our focus on that outcome. We’re not measuring a set of traits.
People ask me all the time, “What is the profile of a good caregiver?” The answer is, there is no one profile. The data shows that there is a “right” person for a specific job based on any number of factors. That’s what enables you to put people in places where they’re going to achieve the outcomes that matter to the organization.
At Arena, we are predicting the likelihood that an individual is going to be retained in a specific job at a specific location. That’s exactly what the platform is doing. Our focus is predicting the measurable outcome we want instead of saying, “I want to hire someone who is detail-oriented or resourceful.” All these things may be true, but that trait-based approach is where bias often slips into the equation.
What data is included in the Arena Analytics predictive model for applicant evaluation?
Norton: We’re constantly growing the data lake and data sources we leverage here. One of the fundamental philosophies of the platform is, the more diverse and robust that data set, the better predictive power your platform has. We’re gathering data from three main buckets: the hiring institution, third-party data and the applicants.
The hiring institution relates to historical hires and terminations, and employee data that helps us understand the patterns of retention,engagement and performance against the outcomes that matter. We also look into hiring systems so that we’re pulling data about applicants who are coming through their system. Who didn’t make it? Who got promoted? Who transferred? All of those employment outcomes.
Second is the third-party data. We’re leveraging technology to gather data about the local job market, the job role itself and even the sentiment around the hiring organizations. The reason we gather that data is because if we want to make a prediction about the likelihood that an individual is going to be retained in a specific job in a specific organization, we need to know as much about the job and the organization as we know about the person. It’s not about finding a generic good caregiver, or good dining server. It’s about the precise match between that person and the role at this point in time.
The third bucket is data from the applicants. We’re gathering the data they submitted through an application process. We also have them interact with us on our mobile platform for about five minutes. We’re introducing experiences in that five minutes to see how the person responds. That puts a different lens on the applicant. It’s the totality of those three large buckets of data that keep our platform producing outcome data.
Arena claims to reduce biased hiring. How does it do this?
Norton: Look, we’re human beings. As human beings, we can’t help but have bias. Some of it is unconscious. We create cognitive shortcuts for ourselves in all kinds of settings and it crops up in hiring too. We say, “I know if someone’s résumé looks like this, they’re going to be successful here. I know if someone went to that school, that’s a pretty good indicator that they’ll do well in this role. I know if they have this experience, they’re likely to succeed here.”
We create these cognitive shortcuts based on anecdotal experiences, and at Arena we believe this is where bias creeps into our decision making. Arena removes those unconscious biases, helping organizations diversify their workforces through a mathematical approach.
We build two models. One tries to make the best prediction possible about whether someone will be retained in a role, for example, and the other tries to identify demographic information about the candidate — is this a woman, what is their age, what is their ethnicity? — from the available data. We then pit these two models against each other to create what lives on the platform.
The effect is that we have the strongest predictive model you can have subject to the constraint that no particular demographic group is more or less likely to be successful than any other. As a result, Arena predictions help diversify your team for even stronger outcomes.
In addition to retention predictions, what other insights and outcomes can Arena potentially offer?
Norton: The likelihood of on-time attendance or likelihood of high rates of engagement under a particular manager. We’ve even predicted sales yield, or the likelihood that an individual will outperform his or her peers in a sales role.
In addition to those very specific predictions, our clients find that as they improve retention and the workforce stabilizes, there is a ripple effect on patient and resident experience and outcomes. In health care, people drive the quality of care and outcomes that can be delivered. When you stabilize your workforce and fill it with individuals who are thriving in their roles, you deliver better care.
Arena has made bold claims backed by bold numbers about the impact its methods have on hiring and turnover. How will these outcomes improve the agencies and build a better society?
Norton: Arena exists because we want to fix the way people get hired and promoted, and help every person find meaningful work. We want to fix the reality that talent is equally distributed while opportunity often isn’t. Our predictive algorithms help us identify talent and match it to opportunity. For organizations that use Arena, it’s a win-win-win situation. When those organizations match the right people to the right roles, the organization wins. We see better financial performance, improved customer experience, higher business performance and better quality of life among employees.
Looked at through another lens, when employees are fulfilled by their work and have a path to professional and personal growth, they show up in the world in a way that impacts everybody around them. Not just their teammates at work and the people they serve, but their families, their friends and their communities.
The work we’re doing here at Arena is really about that: reimagining talent in a way that improves the lives of people, organizations and communities.
Entering this year, no one knew fully what to expect in the home health industry. What has been the biggest surprise to you in the industry this year? What impact do you think that surprise will have on the industry in 2022?
Norton: The pandemic has seen an increase in demand for home-based care. That incredible industry growth has had several impacts there. This industry is going to be the source of opportunity for meaningful work for people who maybe never thought about going into health care, but for whom this work would be fulfilling and would enable them to thrive.
I’ve also seen an increased pattern of individuals who had no experience in health care moving into roles caring for others. They’ve not only seen how they’re impacting the lives of those for whom they care, but also how it impacts them personally in their own personal fulfillment. I’m excited to see how this workforce grows and develops, and how nontraditional talent meets the needs of this rapidly growing industry.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Arena Analytics’ mission is to use data to transform the workforce such that people and organizations thrive. To learn more, visit arena.io.
The Voices Series is a sponsored content program featuring leading executives discussing trends, topics and more shaping their industry in a question-and-answer format. For more information on Voices, please contact sales@agingmedia.com.
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