HR

03 March 2010

As private sector employers rejoin the war for talent following the recession, the third sector is competing for business partners to press home commercial advantage, while public sector HR recruitment efforts look set to be hampered by budget cuts.

“We are comfortably ahead of what we budgeted for in January and are ahead for February as well,” says John Maxted, chief executive at Digby Morgan. “New job orders in our City business are at the same level as 2008 and our interim business is also very strong.” He adds that regardless of economic climate, HR habitually suffers from a dearth of business-focused professionals and reward specialists.

In the third sector this dearth is keenly felt, says Elizabeth Sideris, Cancer Research UK executive director of HR. “It is essential for us to recruit HR professionals with commercial acumen, strategic insight and influencing skills. Finding this mixture of skill sets, coupled with an understanding of our complex business, is always challenging.”

Martin Thomas, head of BT recruitment, told Recruiter that in a bid to meet the demand for business partners, BT has recently run internal assessment centres to bring non-HR people into HR generalist roles.

And in the recession, Thomas says, recruiters have had to be flexible on fees. “There is definitely downward pressure on margins, with agencies being fairly flexible on fees, especially for volume/multiple roles.”

There is definitely downward pressure on margins, with agencies being fairly flexible on fees, especially for volume/multiple roles.

With public sector cuts seemingly inevitable, recruitment departments are not only seeking flexibility on margins from their agency partners but also looking at alternative staffing solutions, according to Mike Cooke, lead officer of pay and reward at the Public sector People Managers’ Association (PPMA) and director of organisation development at the London Borough of Camden.

“Agencies are having to be more flexible on fees,” he says. “The squeeze on public sector spending means that the whole supply chain is affected. Simply tightening margins may be a short-term response but is no answer in the long term. We have to re-invent our approach. For example, we’ve recently entered into an agreement with Hays to run our recruitment service [at Camden] so that it’s more joined up with our temporary recruitment and focused on creative problem solving.”

As costs come under increasing scrutiny recruiters have responded by providing added value through additional services.

“We provide coaching, assessment, talent management, and write white papers which we provide to industry on HR and the economic climate,” says Anthony Pierce, associate director HR recruitment at Hudson.

HR search firm Higher Talent has launched Higher Talent partner, a network of HR consultants that work as associates of Higher Talent, meeting clients’ long-term and short-term requirements. Alison Hughes, managing director, says: “These are people who work on a day rate, so it could be for a firm that wants to look at leadership development for its board in a full-time role, with a consultant working for a few days.”

But while HR consultants can bring insight into a firm’s staffing requirements, Sideris says the government needs to do more to define HR’s future role. “It may be helpful if government invested in some organisational studies about the impact of rapidly changing working environments, the phenomenal impact of technology changes and the implications for sourcing the working environment. This would influence the enabling and support role that HR might play.”

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