FROM APRIL 2014's RECRUITER MAGAZINE

Employers in sectors pressurised by factors such as low pay, high attrition, skills shortages and too few quality candidates say they could use an injection of innovation into their recruitment practices. 

But while promising to transform businesses, providers of recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) services are failing to come up with proposals that could do just that, the employers claim.

And employers across a variety of business and industry sectors contend further that RPOs must stop resorting to ‘standard, off-the-shelf’ solutions for complex recruiting challenges.

BUPA and Rolls-Royce were among the UK businesses making their views known to RPO provider Capita following the release of Capita-commissioned research into innovation. The survey results revealed widespread employer dissatisfaction with RPO services across providers, underscoring that RPO clients want “more value and innovation” amid calls for better service delivery and a better quality of RPO staff to provide the service.

Cath Possamai, former acting managing director of Capita Managed Services who now heads strategy for the Army Recruiting Group at the RPO, acknowledged to Recruiter that innovation tops the wish list for RPO clients and potential clients. “The $100m question is, what is innovation?” she asked. However, she added it was clear from the research that innovation is “less about sexy technology and more about getting really brilliant service provision”.

Mark Linden, head of resourcing at healthcare organisation BUPA, told Recruiter: “At BUPA, we have quite a challenging recruitment landscape — everything from care workers to senior directors within our business. I don’t believe there is any company out there at the moment which could put a presentation or proposal in front of me that would make me think I could outsource all of my recruitment to them.”

He continued: “The sort of innovation I’m looking for is them coming to the table and saying, ‘Right, you have a very large attrition rate for care workers. This is what we propose to reduce your attrition rate, and to bring better quality staff into the organisation, without our necessarily having to raise pay rates.’

“I wish I had the answer to how we would do that because I think it would really revolutionise how care workers and nurses are recruited into organisations.”

Jane Crane, head of resourcing at Rolls-Royce, concurred with Linden’s sentiment, saying: “When you’re looking at any outsourcing, you want [your organisation to progress] a step up from where you are, a game changer.” Always, she said, her experience has been “a slight disappointment”.

However, since requiring the involvement of Rolls-Royce’s resourcing team in selecting key members of an RPO’s on-site or embedded team, “that has made a huge difference in the calibre of people on the account”, Crane said.

As an example, she said, RPO staff working for Rolls-Royce needed to have an understanding of engineering so that “the hiring manager does not have to explain yet again what engineering means”. Similarly, an engineering company will have a different culture to, say, a banking or finance organisation, and those working on such accounts must understand those differences, which is not always the case, Crane pointed out.

For Rolls-Royce, innovation might involve finding new pathways into the passive candidate marketplace, beyond simply using offshore sourcing capabilities, Crane said. But she, like BUPA’s Linden, acknowledged that she does not herself know what that innovative solution might be.

Possamai believes that the road to real and sustainable innovation will depend on how the groundwork is laid at the beginning through open, honest ‘pre-engagement’ talks between client and the RPO. Also essential to getting it all right will be “correct pricing models”, Possamai said, so that the RPO has not undercut its financial viability yet the client feels the deal is fair. Further, Possamai suggests “getting the basics right” and investing in resourcing leadership.

But she warns that innovation won’t come cheap. “If the RPO keeps coming in cheaper, cheaper and cheaper, the client won’t get the service they want.”

DeeDee Doke

• For more on the Capita research, see ‘Innovate or lose out’, Recruiter, November 2013

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