Thursday, 09 February 2012

RBS’s Bor plans to cut agency use in drive to direct recruiting

17-February-2010 | By Colin Cottell

Direct recruiters do a better and cheaper job than recruitment agencies, according to RBS’s director of group resourcing.

Susan Bor, told Recruiter: “’Direct’ is one of my biggest mantras, which is a move away from the use of third party suppliers for a significant chunk of our jobs, because we save the organisation millions.

“In some parts of these businesses it used to be that all that ever happened was the business would ring up their supplier down the road and get them to send a few CVs.

“We think we do a much better job, a cheaper job.

“It’s not that I don’t think there isn’t a place for agencies, but I do think we carry the brand and care more about people experiencing RBS affirmatively.”

Bor says she plans to end all use of agencies for the bank’s volume recruitment of branch and call centre staff. “I don’t think there should be any agency utilisation there.”

“We started 12 months ago and we will build on it this year,” she adds. Agency use has already fallen to around 40-50% of RBS jobs from 80-90%.

“Once we have our digital marketing set up, which we will have by July, the idea is we have a mega-size database that our recruiters search from, and hopefully that will drive more traffic directly into us.”

Bor says agencies will continue to have a role away from the bank’s volume recruitment, though even here she says the plan is to cut use by 10% a year.

For example, agencies would be used for front office or senior positions “where it is either too sensitive a role or where it is particularly niche, where the research capability would already be with that supplier and they already know the market, so the speed factor would come.”

“I want a small number of suppliers who really understand us rather than having millions everywhere.”

Readers' comments (2)

  • Rob Sheffield | Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:02 pm

    I do agree that the days of volume recruitment are challenged and that suppliers need to continue to evolve and develop their services to justify the fees they charge and that having a small number of niche suppliers is key.

    For us specialism is the key, whilst I do think direct recruitment has its place I have seen very few large-scale clients operate this efficiently. I think it is easy for internal recruiters and procurement to suggest they save millions in recruitment fees. Rarely to they take into account the amount of time spent internally by line managers checking and verifying skills, good recruiters take a large section of this away. Coupled with KPI's based on turn around time and drop out of employees from 0 - 12 months all of these factors add costs to a business that internal recruiters rarely take into account when presenting savings to a business.

    I am not suggesting internal recruiters do not have their place but I would not place the value of a job being cheaper equating to great service, in our business and industry we have developed excellent client relationships based on our industry knowledge the ability to consult and be more specialized than the majority of internal recruiters.

    I think the crux of this argument rests on business choosing to partner with recruiters who understand their business and can clearly define the value they add. What is often the case is clients operate with a large number of suppliers based on cost thinking they will get value rather than working with a niche supply chain in order to concentrate on core areas that they find it difficult to staff. Too much emphasis is based on the initial cost and not the long term costs and value of a relationship to the business. Any agency working as a supplier should be working as a brand advocate, if there not then they are probably not the right supplier, however the client has to allow them to do so.

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  • Steve | Sat, 27 Feb 2010 5:01 pm

    Rob, I couldn't have said that any better. And especially RBS, my best advice would be go back to basics and try being a bank and a support service to the country's needs. The last thing you need to be is telling us you're going to save £10m in recruitment but don't quantify time, yet have some glory boy trader in the city blow £100m in the markets. When you have mastered being a bank, I'll let you tell me how to be a recruiter.

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