Faced with a stagnated business, Steven Kirkpatrick, chief executive of Cordant Group’s recruitment division, set about an ambitious and radical restructure and rebrand, unveiled exclusively with Recruiter today.

Kirkpatrick, previously Adecco managing director, started his new role with the family-owned company in January this year.

“My brief was to 'fix this thing',” he told Recruiter.

The division, now named Cordant Recruitment, encompasses four specialist consultancies – Cordant People, Cordant Technical and Engineering, Cordant Managed Services and Cordant Medical and Wellbeing. 

The restructure sees some of the company’s previously separately-operating brands rolled into one under a Cordant banner.

For example, Prime Time Recruitment (except the managed services offering), Abacus, Premiere People, Match Employment and CCS have been rolled into one and rebranded Cordant People, which encompasses all general staffing such as warehouse work, catering jobs, office support roles and more.

Premiere People is keeping its name in Northern Ireland though, owing to its market position there.

Kirkpatrick told Recruiter the move to group those brands together stemmed in part from a high level of competition between some of the brands.

Because of that, they were therefore not performing as well as they could.

Niche brands such as The Sugarman Group, which was acquired by the company earlier this year, will keep its own branding. In Sugarman’s case, it will sit under the Cordant Medical and Wellbeing umbrella.

“As I look at these niches, depending on the personality of the niche, I’ll decide whether it should be a Cordant-led niche or something different.”

He said about a dozen people had left because of cultural change rather than natural attrition. They include regional directors, managing directors, branch managers and consultants.

He was quick to point out that there are now 250 more people at the company than there were at the beginning of the year. They are, in part, to staff some of the five new offices opened in the last 10 months.

There are now 52 Cordant People offices nationwide and Kirkpatrick intends to bring that up to 70 by the end of next year to “truly have a national footprint”.

Cordant Recruitment has 95 branches nationwide.

He said he did not know how much money the restructure will cost as it was ongoing.

• For more of this exclusive look at company’s rebrand, see the December issue of Recruiter magazine.

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