Bringing recruitment back in-house
The Group Head Office of a major international Financial Services organisation had, a year previously, outsourced all of its recruitment activity to an RPO. This was based on the success of the RPO agreement for one of the UK operating divisions which had utilised this method successfully for a number of years. However, the recruitment needs of the group’s strategic Head Office, were very different from the needs of an operations business. The RPO successfully dealt with the volume recruitment activity of IT personnel, actuaries, sales, finance call centre and administrative staff, but the needs of the Group Head Office were somewhat different. Although consisting of only some 200 heads, restructuring in the previous year meant the need for nearly 40 unique recruits. Management Information from the RPO was lacking, time taken to recruit too long, the quality of the candidates not of a satisfactory level. A volume recruitment model did not work for a bespoke recruitment requirement.
Reviewing the service model against the requirement for the Group’s Head Office, resulted in recruitment being brought back in-house. The project had five main areas to address:
- Transition away from the RPO agreement whilst maintaining continuity. Ensuring that all necessary Management Information was in place, payments made and liability understood and met.
- Design, agree, document, communicate and roll-out the new recruitment process within the business.
- Review all suppliers and identify new ones that could service the needs of the Group Head Office, create and sign the suppliers up to robust terms and conditions of business.
- Operationally to recruit over a six month period over 25 unique and key strategic hires to the business.
- Support, mentor and coach the business during the transition phase to be more self supporting and to mentor, support and coach the new preferred suppliers moving them in to a truly partnership relationship.