John Lewis takes ‘a bit of a journey’ to centralised resourcing
Yet many hiring managers in JLP businesses believe that centralisation has led to “a lack of personal touch” in recruiting, acknowledged Yvette Bloxham-Smith, JLP head of resourcing, in a talk to in-house recruiters last month at the LinkedIn Talent Connect conference in London.
Centralised resourcing, as part of a major organisational transformation, is involving “a bit of a journey with some challenges”, she said.
JLP includes the John Lewis department stores, Waitrose supermarkets, online and catalogue businesses, distribution centres, a ferry operation and a farm, plus hotels and clubs that serve company employees.
All of its 92,000 permanent employees are referred to as ‘partners’ and are shareholders in the business. This creates, as Bloxham-Smith put it, “a democracy” in which partners are consulted on all significant business changes. Seasonal employees become temporary partners during their stint at JLP.
Before centralisation, the company, one of the UK’s most admired employers, had previously left most recruitment and hiring to its local operations where applications were all sifted manually, Bloxham-Smith said. The move to a centralised recruitment operation was to ensure consistency across the company’s many divisions. Overall, JLP makes 30,000 hires each year as well as a “large number” of internal moves.
A refreshed and mobile-friendly careers website were among the improvements incorporated into the transformation, as well as a revitalised graduate proposition. Also key to the resourcing transformation was the development of “situational judgment tools” to “bring to life” the challenges of specific jobs and better assess applicants for potential success in jobs. The development followed an intensive analysis of jobs across JLP. Bloxham-Smith said that the implementation of these tools had led to “good success” in hiring to date.
Also, the centralised resourcing function has enjoyed “great success” in filling hard-to-fill roles, she said. Twenty-eight partners have been hired through LinkedIn.
Through what Bloxham-Smith and her team called their ‘boots on the ground’ programme, the resourcing team took information about the changes being rung out across JLP to “every meeting we could get on the agenda for… we did everything we possibly could to get out there” to promote understanding and engagement.
Some parts of the business have accepted the new approach to recruitment. However, she said, the transformation “hasn’t all gone down that well – what hiring managers don’t like is the lack of personal touch. Some have really pushed back”.
But a key learning throughout the transformation has been to celebrate firsts and successes – the first call taken in the central resourcing office and the first requisition received, for example. “Think about all the firsts you can celebrate,” she said.
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