According to recent research, 55 per cent of businesses in technical sectors – engineering, construction, aerospace, nuclear, defence and more – are hiring more people on average per month than they were pre COVID-19.
To experience such a surge in demand for talent in such a relatively short window of time requires a major internal mobilisation process – and it’s not one that many organisations were previously prepared to manage alongside all the additional red tape and tick boxing that the pandemic has inflicted on HR and talent teams.
They are, of course, specific challenges that are now part and parcel of every industry that operates within the UK – if not around the world. And yet, every industry is still so different in its make-up that talent solutions providers must avoid taking a blanket approach to how the impact of Coronavirus shapes the strategies, products and services they offer to businesses requiring a very tailored approach to their hiring.
So, what can an outsourced recruitment solution, an RPO, deliver? We spoke with Sam Price, head of client solutions at RPOne to explain how outsourced recruitment can solve your organisation’s specific challenges.
“If you look for differences between industries and their challenges you will of course always find them, but there are also many commonalities that are sector-agnostic – whether that’s demand for skills versus skill availability, creating a truly positive candidate journey, a lack of ED&I or massive legislative changes, such as we’ve seen in IR35.
“Businesses work in generally similar landscapes, but each have their own nuances, cultures and objectives, so they are crying out for a recruitment solution that will intertwine with those really important factors, and then wrap around them wholly, with a selection of different services that are cherry-picked to suit their needs today, but which can flex and scale on demand as their organisation changes.
“The need for something like this has gotten more time critical over the last 12 months, as customers have made more noise about their desire to have a solution that could – in theory – change overnight, should the need ever occur again for them to do so as we saw in March 2020, and which it remains simultaneously, intrinsically, ‘theirs’ to own.”
Responding to this, Morson has launched RPOne – an outsourced recruitment solution we describe as a transformation of the typical RPO model. Offering clients a shopping list of services from which they can pick to meet their individual needs, RPOne is designed to be a more agile, custom-fit package, which can be adapted to suit organisations of all sorts and sizes, and which is scalable, growing alongside a business at the necessary pace.
Sam said:
“Morson is well known for its contingent and permanent solutions as part of an MSP – something we’ve long offered as a white glove service, and which has grown significantly over the last decade. That’s largely due to the trust our clients have put in us to continue developing a programme of works that meets their needs. But in the last 12 months, we’ve heard from businesses – not yet customers – who are saying their RPO solution now doesn’t work for them. The offering right across the industry has – somehow – become a one size fits all approach, but actually, it fits no-one anymore. Our objective as a business is to keep reinventing and bringing services to market that are designed in response to a need. Specialising in so many sectors, this is a request we’ve seen time and time again – even before the pandemic – and RPOne has been borne out of that.
“Yes, there are recruitment principles which carry across different verticals, but what we have set out to do is offer a solution that is completely malleable, that can mould itself around the challenges of businesses working in different sectors because the suite of services we’re offering is so extensive, that every single tailor-made package will be different, designed in line with the client receiving it.”
Morson has created a case in point with an arm of its RPOne offering – Grow RPO. An outsourced recruitment solution designed specifically for start-ups and tech businesses, it is an adaption of RPOne that starts on a level playing field with the customer, with Morson’s experts assigned to support clients at the very onset of their recruitment journey. Far from an all-encompassing solution that might be overwhelming – and come with a high price tag – Grow RPO will mirror the make-up of its users’ business models to work in parallel, with the option to ‘grow’ the package as the organisation scales up in due course.
Sam said:
“What we have created is a service which directly answers clients’ problem statements, no matter which industry they’re in. This isn’t about bells and whistles – it’s about having the core recruitment services available that help to solve problems.”
While Sam explains that there will be certain ‘red flags’ within any organisation that might indicate they need an RPO solution in place – a surge in demand which is a struggle to manage; a lack of confidence in an internal hiring team; difficulty in forecasting; an inconsistent candidate attraction process; a need to scale quickly to satisfy investors – she says what’s important is to utilise RPOne for a business’ specific objectives.
She said:
“Within aerospace, defence or marine, for example, businesses are highly regulated with very mature models that include a mix of contingent and permanent teams – an RPO is the only way to achieve a total talent solution that ticks all of those boxes. In our work with Manchester Airports Group (MAG), while we were initially contracted to source engineering skillsets, it quickly became apparent to us that what the Group required was support identifying the right professional services talent – HR, procurement, legal and more. We are fully embedded within their operations to deliver cost efficiencies and attract talent to these essential roles, and it’s been hugely successful
“Rail is a similar market; however, it’s typically contractor dominated, which requires an extensive vetting solution. Not every company has the time or capacity to invest in that, so we will deliver it on their behalf. Nuclear and power industries need to be more focused on their value added services and employer brand proposition to attract enough talent to the industry; the renewables market is surging and specifically needs young talent to meet the country’s future infrastructure needs. In construction, there’s such a huge responsibility for employers to adhere to health and safety policies which change regularly, and they struggle to stay abreast.
“These are the more intricate and critical elements of business which require significant investments of time, money and effort to put in place successfully. But by outsourcing to a talent partner that takes on the burden of these things – basically, because it’s second nature to us – clients can achieve major efficiencies while simultaneously being teamed up with their industry’s best possible candidates.
“Individuals looking for their next role have incredibly high expectations; they expect their journey with an employer or a brand to be conducted proficiently, but not all internal client teams are geared up to deliver it. Our experience over the years puts us in the best position to not only understand what needs to be presented and delivered, but to take it on ourselves.”
And the ultimate aim with RPOne? Sam says: