This is part seven of a 10-part series designed to help you transform your company, gain a competitive advantage, and sustain long-term business success. In part five, we explained the difference between core and noncore business activities. In part six, we dove deeper with a real-life example of how outsourcing noncore functions can benefit business outcomes.
Today, we’re going to share a specific non-core critical business function that may represent a major untapped opportunity for your business.
As a business leader, what could be more important than your role as gate-keeper of the culture and soul of your company? Determining how to attract and hire the finest talent is one of the most critical business decisions you’ll ever make. And yet regardless of the hiring process you adopt, its greatest value to your company occurs only during the final interviewing phase, when you and your team can look candidates square in the eye and ultimately decide whether they are the right fit for your company.
The rest of the process is simply a means to an end. For that reason, the employment function lends itself perfectly to outsourcing. This front-office activity is not unique to any industry, and there are experts who possess greater skills, systems, and efficiencies than any person or department within your organization. Why? Because that’s all they do every day, 24/7. They ought to perform this task better, faster, and maybe even cheaper than your company can.
Staffing and recruiting organizations exist to find temporary, contract, and full-time talent. Just as you are dedicated to making your product and delivering your service, they are dedicated to bringing you the right people at the right time and at the right price.
Many companies today are growing more familiar with Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO), whereby a third party assumes responsibility for all their external recruiting. This service becomes even more valuable when business leaders use it for outsourcing the entire employment function: bringing in new talent (external movement) as well as relocating workers within an organization (internal movement).
External Movement:
The acquisition of outside talent that will fit in one or more of these job categories: full-time regular, part-time, intern, co-op, contractor, temporary, or outsourced.
An RPO solution for hiring external employees can give you a leg up on your competition by enabling you to reach the talent first so you can make the job offer first. The measurement tools offered through this lean and transparent system ensure integrity and efficiency in every step of the process.
Without such a solution in place, many companies fail to fulfill their responsibilities when they turn to a recruiting service. Looking for talent, they’ll call on such a business, which works quickly to send them qualified resumes, but then they might take a week or longer to provide feedback. In that time, the candidates have other interviews and receive job offers, and the process must start all over.
Companies often demand full accountability on the recruiter’s part but don’t place the same expectations on their organization, unknowingly paying the price in long-term vacancies and higher recruiting costs. However, when the processes they are accountable for are held to a standard or KPI (Key Performance Indicators), companies can improve their access to the best talent available—while lowering their hiring expenses.
In a lean RPO system, every step is measured, process takt times are set, and accountability and escalation plans are established for all parties involved. Everyone can view this real-time data on the Internet and stay informed.
Here are the many advantages of transferring your external recruitment tasks to an RPO provider:
Internal Movement:
The relocation of employees within an organization that occurs primarily through promotions and transfers.
To obtain the most value from RPO, companies need to consider using it for both internal and external workforce movement. The movement of existing employees falls within the following broad categories:
- Job to job
- Shift to shift
- Plant (location) to plant (location)
- Country to country
- Continent to continent
At most sizable organizations, every time an employee bids or other-wise applies for an internal job opening, a minimum of eleven processes have to be completed for each person, and an additional eight processes for the employee who subsequently moves. Although the management of this process is important, no part adds value to a company’s product or service offering, making this hybrid RPO model such a worth-while option.
Growing in popularity, Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) can help HR departments reduce hiring costs while improving efficiency.
In part eight of this series, we’ll share another non-core critical business function that can and should be outsourced to help you reach the next level of business transformation.
Stay tuned!
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Note: This blog post was inspired by and adapted from Randall Hatcher’s book, “The Birth of a New Workforce.