Square Pegs

by Matthew Moore on 19th October 2006

Project background

In a period of growth, a public financial services company was experiencing excessive staff turnover rates. Line managers perceived that recruitment, particularly in customer service departments, was too slow and the quality of candidates was too variable. Recruitment was a key process given the organisation’s plans for substantial mergers and acquisitions growth. No data was available to monitor the effectiveness of the recruitment process.

Problem

Recruitment of customer service operators was taking too long, and the quality of the candidates sent by recruitment agencies was poor. Substantial mismatches in the expectations of senior and line management within customer services about candidate and job specifications existed, leading to staff sickness being too high, candidates not understanding their prospective roles when they came for interview. As a result customer service departments lost their best staff to other departments.

After analysis of the current recruitment process it was found that the roles of call centre advisors were not clearly defined. There was large variation in the standard of candidates forwarded by external recruitment agencies. The actual test during interview did not accurately predict potential future performance and there was very limited new employee review during the first six months of employment. Defects in the manpower planning process also contributed to the problem, as limited vision of potential recruitment requirements led to last minute ‘fill to role’ situations

Solution

A new manpower planning process was implemented in which potential future recruitment requirements are now reviewed monthly. The role of a call centre advisor was clearly defined and agreed. A specific candidate test was produced to reflect the new definition of call centre advisor and a more rigorous three monthly performance assessment was introduced for new recruits. New customer service job descriptions were introduced and a new role of customer services recruitment co-ordinator was established. In order to improve the clarity of communication with suppliers and mangers a new agency model and process were designed. A candidate information pack was created and the interview process was re-designed to create use of assessment centres. A new three month assessment centre questionnaire was introduced to analyse performance in role, and as data had been lacking, a new management information process was designed to analyse process effectiveness. A process was introduced to monitor the performance of external recruitment agencies.

Business Benefits

The recruitment cycle time for customer service roles was substantially shortened. The risks of recruiting staff that subsequently proved to be ill suited for their roles were significantly reduced. Over 60% of the recruitment agencies previously used were subsequently removed from the preferred supplier lists. £36k was saved on wasted recruitment agency cost. Finally, learning points from this project provided a footprint for a subsequent company-wide recruitment process review.

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Organisation: Paloma

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