What was the problem?
Lilies Home Care recruited carers on paper. Every applicant filled in four separate forms by hand, and the office then chased missing details, DBS checks, right-to-work documents, references and driving licences. Recruitment administration took about five hours of the team’s time every week.
Much of that time went on applicants who were never eligible in the first place, and nobody knew until the forms had been checked by hand. Staff turnover is high across home care, so the same work came round again and again. The website did not help either. It had no enquiry form, so enquiries arrived with no structured way of following them up.
For a business that exists to look after people, every hour spent on paperwork was an hour taken away from care.
What did we build?
We built two connected systems. The first is a single online application form linked to a complete recruitment workflow, which checks each applicant against the agreed eligibility requirements the moment they apply. The second is a new website with enquiry handling built in.
When someone applies, the workflow collects and validates their information, checks whether they meet the requirements and moves them to the right next step automatically. Applicants who are not eligible are filtered out straight away, so the team only reviews applications that genuinely need a person’s judgement.
On the website, every enquiry is captured, acknowledged and followed up through the same process, including enquiries that arrive out of hours.
Both were built around how Lilies already worked, tested before going live and handed over with full support, so the team could rely on them from the first day.
What changed?
Weekly recruitment administration fell from about five hours to ten minutes. The changes behind that figure are set out below.
| Area | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Application forms | Four separate paper forms completed by hand, with lower completion rates and hours of data entry | One structured online form |
| Missing information | Staff chased missing details and incomplete submissions by hand | The workflow collects, validates and routes information automatically |
| Eligibility checks | Carried out by hand with no consistent process | Run automatically, triggering the right next step |
| Enquiry handling | No enquiry form and no structured follow-up | A professional website with enquiry management built in |
| Weekly recruitment admin | About five hours | About ten minutes |
What did Lilies say?
“West Country Digital rebuilt our entire recruitment process. Applicants now apply directly through our website and are screened automatically the moment they submit, with anyone ineligible filtered out instantly. Work that used to take us five hours a week now takes ten minutes. I cannot recommend them enough.”
Diane Gledhill, Founder and Office Manager, Lilies Home Care
What else did we build?
We also built Lilies a connected rota and carer app. It replaced two separate platforms with one system that brings scheduling, availability and each day’s visits together, used by more than 60 office staff, carers and clients.
Carers open the app to see their visits and what each one involves, including medication records and the checks that must be completed. Visit records save on the phone when there is no signal and send once the connection returns. You can see it on our bespoke software page.
What can other care providers take from this?
Much of the saving came from checking eligibility at the point of application, not from speeding up the checks the office was already doing. If a large share of your recruitment time goes on applicants who were never going to be suitable, screening them out automatically is usually the first thing worth automating.
- Measure the time first. Knowing it took five hours a week gave a clear baseline to agree the result against.
- Replace the paper, not the process. The workflow is built around the checks Lilies already made, so the team did not have to learn a new way of working.
- Keep people where judgement matters. Automation handles the routine checks so the team reviews only the applicants worth their time.
Read the full Lilies Home Care results, or see how we approach automation for other kinds of repetitive work.