Attracting and retaining top talent is critical to the success of any organisation. However, the recruitment process can be complex, time-consuming, and expensive, often leaving organisations struggling to find the right candidates. Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) might be the solution to your talent strategy woes and could revolutionise your talent strategy. In this blog, we will explore the advantages of an outsourced recruitment process.
Learn how RPO can help you find and retain the best talent, improve your recruitment efficiency, and enhance your employer brand.
What is RPO and how does it work?
RPO is a recruitment outsourcing service where an external provider takes on some or all of an organisation’s recruitment activities. The RPO provider acts as an extension of the organisation’s HR or recruitment team. They manage the entire recruitment process, from candidate sourcing to onboarding.
RPO providers can offer a range of services, including talent engagement, marketing, employer branding, applicant tracking system (ATS) management, interview scheduling, and hiring analytics. By leveraging their expertise, technology, and resources, RPO providers help organisations be more efficient, reduce costs, and enhance the quality of their hires.
An RPO provider often begins by working to understand your recruitment challenges and goals. They then design a solution tailored to your specific requirements. The RPO provider then takes on the recruitment activities, often using a combination of technology, data analytics, and human expertise to streamline the process and improve recruitment outcomes.
RPO services offer a flexible and scalable solution for organisations looking to improve their recruitment outcomes while reducing costs and saving time. By leveraging the expertise and resources of an external provider, you can enhance your recruitment efficiency, quality of hires, and employer brand.
RPO vs traditional in-house recruitment
There are so many benefits of using RPO services compared to traditional in-house recruitment. Here are just a few:
Enhanced efficiency: RPO providers have the latest technology and recruitment tools, which can help streamline the recruitment process. This can include applicant tracking systems, marketing software, and data analytics tools. These can help identify the best candidates for the job.
Cost savings: RPO can help organisations reduce the cost of recruitment by eliminating the need for in-house recruitment teams. Therefore reducing the need for advertising, job boards, and other recruitment-related expenses.
Scalability: RPO providers can quickly scale up or down recruitment services based on the organisation’s hiring needs. This can be particularly beneficial for organisations that experience seasonal or unpredictable recruitment demands.
Access to talent: RPO providers have access to a wider pool of talent through their recruitment networks and databases. In turn, this can help organisations find better-qualified and more diverse candidates for the job.
Expertise and knowledge: RPO providers typically have a team of recruitment professionals with specialized expertise in different industries and functions. This can help organisations improve their recruitment outcomes by leveraging the provider’s knowledge and experience.
Improved employer branding: RPO providers can help organisations enhance your employer brand by creating a positive candidate experience. This can help organisations attract and retain top talent.
Outsourcing your recruitment needs to an expert can increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve candidate experiences.
Recruitment outsourcing misconceptions.
People often misunderstand or underestimate the potential benefits of RPO. They assume that it’s a one-size-fits-all solution, only suitable for high-volume recruitment or will result in a loss of control for the business. But, the best outsource solutions are a strategic partnership between the provider and the client. They can help with all types of recruitment, from temporary to executive-level candidates, and from high-volume recruitment to niche hires.
Equally, RPO is not a quick fix or overnight solution to your talent challenges. It takes time for an RPO provider to understand your organisation’s specific goals, challenges and culture so that they can tailor their service to best support your business.
RP01
Our RPO offer is brought to you by our standalone brand, RP01. Through RP01 we deliver more than a talent solution, we optimise your entire recruitment process.
We understand that so many of your strategic goals are linked to talent. RP01 enables organisations of all scales to reach true talent potential. We take care of peaks and flows in demand, reduce costs, identify niche talent, build talent brands to attract the best people, manage HR requirements and use data to inform hiring decisions with services that flex with your specific needs.
Our talent and optimisation teams seamlessly impart our expertise into organisations. They help recruit niche skills, create diverse, engaged candidate pipelines, control supply chain quality and reduce costs, remove the burden of HR, source niche skills and manage processes with intelligence and data.
RP01 gets to know your business and your people, integrating with your internal talent strategies, to manage and support your end-to-end recruitment processes and care for and elevate your brand.
If you would like to find out more about how an RPO can help your organisation transform through talent, get in touch or visit rpo-one.com.
Returning to work after maternity leave is daunting for many mums. There’s the inevitable anxiety about leaving your baby, coupled with the worry that you may have forgotten how to do your job, or that things have changed while you’ve been away. On top of that you’ll be balancing your new role as a parent with work responsibilities, and all on very little sleep.
The number of UK mothers in work has reached the highest level in 20 years. Families where both parents work full-time are also on the rise. More than three-quarters of mothers with dependent children are currently in work. So, employers are increasingly working to improve the support they offer for working parents. However, research by Werklabs and SIA has found a considerable gap between parents’ expectations and companies’ offerings. By far, the largest gaps are in making working parents feel included and supported. More than 80% of workers said feeling included is important, but only 43% of managers gave high ratings to their companies’ capabilities in that area.
We spoke to Morson Talent’s Head of bids, Kirsty Hodgson about her return to work this month after becoming a first-time mum last year. Kirsty discusses the importance of maintaining connections with her team, the need for flexible working for both parents and the positive impact of role models in the workplace who demonstrate what working parents can achieve when they have the right support.
To read the full interview and find out more about what employers can do to support working parents visit the Morson Talent blog.
Supporting our people and communities is central to who we are and we’re proud to offer ED&I consultancy services that place inclusion at the heart of the conversation.
Morson Group has joined leading companies from a range of sectors and industries in signing the Inclusive Culture Pledge in 2023, an initiative managed by diversity consultancy EW Group for a 4th consecutive year.
At Morson, we are committed to building inclusive cultures every day. Not only is this good for business, but it’s also the right thing to do. We aim to be a truly 21st-century workforce, where everyone’s talents are welcomed, valued and nurtured.
Jane Farrell and Annie Hedge, two teachers living in London founded EW Group in 1992. They had first-hand knowledge of the barriers many students faced and wanted to be a force for good.
Jane and Annie wanted to bring an inclusive approach to leadership and organisational development. Sharing how the best businesses show real intent to notice, adapt to and embrace difference at work. They believed that organisations would only excel when they fully engaged with diversity in all its forms.
Why make this pledge?
Research has shown that diverse businesses are 35% more likely to financially outperform their industry’s national average. For potential job hunters, 67% now consider a diverse workforce an important factor when considering job offers.
By signing up for the Pledge, we will have exclusive access to DEI experts and thought leaders.
Joining the pledge is a public commitment that we take diversity and inclusion seriously and that we understand the need to provide employees with a safe, fair and supportive place to work.
We’re looking forward to the events provided as part of the Pledge, which will further enhance our internal capacity and ensure we work at the cutting edge of diversity and inclusion. This is an initiative that we believe will benefit our staff, customers and stakeholders.
Sam Price, Morson ED&I lead explains
Signing the Inclusive Culture Pledge for another year empowers our mission to deliver industry-wide cultural change to diversify the talent landscape and ensure that recruitment, retention and growth are placing inclusion first. We’re committed to transforming the talent landscape by encouraging our clients and ourselves to look at every step of the candidate and colleague experience through the lens of equality, diversity and inclusivity. At Morson, recruitment is more than filling roles. It’s transforming businesses, fuelling industry and innovation, creating fulfilling careers, encouraging the next generation, and opening the world of work for all. In 2023, we’ll expand our calendar of engagement via our colleague and diversity board focusing on age, race, LGBTQ+, religion and disability inclusion.
If you want to encourage more diversity within your organisation, we can help. Our ED&I consultancy services help clients attract diverse talent to their organisation, improve or create inclusive cultures and identify barriers to inclusion in the recruitment process.
Director of the Morson Maker Space at the University of Salford, Dr Maria Stukoff has written an article for We Are Tech Women highlighting the importance of partnerships like Morson’s STEM programme with the University of Salford for tackling skills shortages and improving the STEM gender gap.
The link between skills shortages and underrepresentation of women in tech
The ways that academic institutions can partner with businesses to benefit both students and employers
The relationship between Morson Group and the University of Salford
Education and business partnerships
Technology is transforming the 4th industrial revolution and educational institutions often struggle to keep up with integrating new technologies. There has been a boom in maker spaces at universities recently. Stukoff believes that this demonstrates that they are seeking new approaches to ensure students acquire industry-relevant skills.
Stukoff emphasises the importance of partnerships between universities and businesses in developing the skills employers are looking for.
“Morson has provided the core funding for the University of Salford’s state-of-the-art maker space, with a STEM programme that provides students with opportunities to acquire future-fit skills with equipment they will use in the workplace once they graduate. The maker space supports everything from additive manufacturing, metal printing and CNC machining, through to delicate microscopic instrumentation and electronics, folding or laser cutting paper and farm robotics.”
Gerry Mason / Morson Celebration at the new SEE Building, Maker Space, University of Salford
The partnership encourages interdisciplinary collaboration and is helping the university to break down stereotypes and barriers to entry. Stukoff attributes this to Morson’s knowledge of ED&I recruitment best practise. This has informed the industry talks, workshops, career sessions and placement opportunities we have provided to the university. She also discusses our contribution to the university’s Women in Engineering- Go Beyond mentoring programme and the IntoUniversity new learning centre.
It’s an honour to be featured and have the work we are doing recognised, but more importantly, it is wonderful to know that our partnership with the University of Salford is truly making a difference to its students.
In our Summer 22 Labour Trends Report we reported that, for the first time since records began, vacancies across the UK outstripped the number of people seeking work, creating an incredibly tight labour market. Since then, the British economy has officially entered a recession, public sector workers in several industries are on strike, rising levels of people are exiting the workforce and hiring is slowing. As we reach the close of this turbulent year, we consider the impact these conditions have had on the labour market and make our predictions on the 2023 talent trends which will affect UK organisations.
2022 in review
2022 recruitment trend summary:
Global staffing market revenue is predicted to have grown by 11% in 2022, down from a staggering 23% in 2021. More modest global growth is expected in 2023, with 5% in the UK (SIA)
UK staffing firms to exceed pre-pandemic revenue for the first time with 22% growth in 2022. Profit margins are set to decrease as staffing becomes costlier due to aspects such as rate rises. (SIA)
Hiring activity waned at the start of the fourth quarter, the number of permanent placements fell for the first time in 20 months. Heightened economic uncertainty had led some clients to reassess their recruitment plans, while candidate shortages also dampened hiring. (REC Report on Jobs)
A new £4.2bn contract has been awarded to BAE Systems, to build the second batch of Type 26 frigates creating 2,300 new jobs.
Tight labour market conditions, fewer foreign workers and greater hesitancy due to economic uncertainty all dampened candidate numbers. However, the latest fall was the weakest recorded for just over 18 months amid softer declines in both permanent and temporary staff supply.
Employment rate up, but still below pre-Covid levels
The UK employment rate for August to October 2022 increased by 0.2 percentage points to 75.6% but is still below pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic levels.
Over the latest three-month period, the number of employees increased, while self-employed workers decreased. Estimates of payrolled employees for November 2022 show another monthly increase, up 107,000 on the revised October 2022 figures, to a record 29.9 million.
At least some of these increases will be due to seasonal work and temporary contracts over the festive period. So we may see a dip in these numbers in the new year.
From September to November 2022, the estimated number of vacancies fell by 65,000 on the quarter to 1,187,000. Despite five consecutive quarterly falls, the number of vacancies remains at historically high levels. The fall in the number of vacancies reflects uncertainty across industries, as respondents continue to cite economic pressures as a factor in holding back on recruitment.
Unemployment up slightly
The number of people unemployed for up to six months has increased across all age groups. However, the unemployment rate is still at very low levels and has decreased overall this year.
Economic inactivity down, but still above pre-pandemic rates
The economic inactivity rate decreased by 0.2 percentage points to 21.5% in August to October 2022. The decrease in economic inactivity during the latest three-month period was driven by those aged 50 to 64 years. This suggests that some people who had taken early retirement during or shortly after Covid have returned to the workforce, most likely as a result of the cost-of-living crisis.
Flexible working is the priority for the over-50s. The majority (77%) of over-50s who would consider returning to work cited flexible working (36%) as the most important aspect of choosing a new job. The majority of those who would consider returning to work or currently looking for work would like to return on a part-time basis (69%)
Growth in average total pay (including bonuses) and regular pay (excluding bonuses) among employees stayed the same, at 6.1% from August to October 2022. For regular pay, this is the strongest growth rate seen outside of the pandemic period.
In real terms (adjusted for inflation) over the year, total and regular pay both fell by 2.7%. This is slightly smaller than the record fall in real regular pay we saw in April to June 2022 (3.0%) but still remains among the largest falls in growth since comparable records began in 2001.
Over the last 12 months, we have continued to see higher levels of bonus payments compared with previous bonus levels, particularly in March 2022 when the non-seasonally adjusted bonus payment was extremely strong. The largest bonus payments are in the finance and business services sector.
Private sector outstrips public in terms of pay
Average regular pay growth for the private sector was 6.9% in August to October 2022, and 2.7% for the public sector. Outside of the height of the pandemic period, this is the largest growth rate seen for the private sector and is among the largest differences between the private sector and public sector growth rates we have seen.
There were 417,000 working days lost because of labour disputes in October 2022, which is the highest since November 2011.
Gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to have fallen by 0.6% in September 2022, driven by a fall in the services sector. Reasons include; price of energy and fuel, industrial action, currency exchange, additional bank holiday. (ONS – Office for National Statistics)
Predictions for 2023
Flexible working is here to stay
LinkedIn data shows more than a third of workers say they would quit if they had to return to the office full-time. Research by Future Forum found 65% of UK knowledge workers want significant flexibility in their work schedule.
New government plans mean that employees will be able to request flexible working from day one of their employment.
Flexible working doesn’t just mean a combination of working from home and in the office. It can mean employees job-sharing, using flexitime, and working compressed, annualised, or staggered hours.
These new measures will give employees greater control over where, when, and how they work, leading to happier, more productive staff. Flexible working helps employees to balance their work and home life, especially supporting those who have commitments or responsibilities such as caring for children or vulnerable people.
Minister for Small Business Kevin Hollinrake had this to say:
“Giving staff more say over their working pattern makes for happier employees and more productive businesses. Put simply, it’s a no-brainer.
Greater flexibility over where, when, and how people work is an integral part of our plan to make the UK the best place in the world to work.”
Whereas James Dyson was not as keen on the idea
“Flexible working does not suit all businesses and only time will tell what its effects will be on efficiency, cohesion within the workforce, company ethos and, ultimately, the success of businesses.”
Faith-based inclusion to become a priority
The importance of faith-based inclusion has long been recognised, but there’s still a long road to travel for employers to reach this destination. Research in the UK suggests Muslims face some of the highest levels of job discrimination.
Employees are looking for employers to ‘get’ the importance faith plays in both their personal and professional lives. In the UK, 91% of HR managers thought their organisation promoted an understanding of diversity and inclusion on religion and belief, but only 25% of workers agreed this was the case.
Religious diversity has many benefits to creating an engaged, productive and inspired workforce. If employees feel confident to undertake the practices that are important to their faith without fear of discrimination, employers will get the best from them in return.
Let’s talk about Menopause
The “menopause conversation“, was long considered taboo and shameful. However, as the global population of menopausal and postmenopausal women is projected to grow by 47 million women a year it is something that employers are going to have to get comfortable talking about.
90% of women get menopausal symptoms
10% of women leave their jobs due to menopause
Only 14% of women are on HRT in the UK
Effective support for menopausal women could be the key to keeping these valuable and skilled workers in the talent pool. The Bank of Ireland announced in October that it would offer paid leave for women experiencing menopause. We’re expecting to see other large employers follow suit.
More diverse routes into the workforce
University fees are incredibly expensive and that’s before you get to the living costs like accommodation, travel and textbooks. On top of that, graduates are facing an unemployment rate of 12%. That equates to about 96,000 unemployed graduates every academic year). That’s compared to September 2022’s UK overall unemployment rate of 3.6%.
As a result, many young people are looking “learn while they earn”. Avenues such as apprenticeships, part-time study while they work or employer training are expected to become increasingly popular. Many employers will reap the benefit of offering training to staff, when it comes to attracting and retaining new talent. At Morson, we are funding a new STEM centre and multiple scholarships at the University of Salford.
Work-based socialising is evolving
Instigating social interaction in a hybrid work environment is a challenge many businesses are still struggling with. Some companies have begun to schedule in short meetings with no agenda. Others are leaving time at the end of meetings for open conversations. Some are creating virtual team rooms where colleagues can chat throughout the day. There is no one size fits all approach, but creating opportunities for colleagues to bond will have a huge impact on job satisfaction levels.
“Firms that stay ahead in hybrid will be intentional about how they use the virtual office – and be sure to schedule time for informal interactions – not just for the water cooler chat but also for learning.”
– Ashley Whillans, assistant professor at Harvard Business School
Embracing the metaverse
A recent YouGov poll found that only 37% of Brits are confident in describing what the metaverse is. However, VR and AR are already being used by pilots and surgeons in training. During the pandemic, automakers began to embrace this tech to design new vehicles. Whether we fully understand it or not, we’re expecting employers, universities and training programmes to jump into the metaverse in the coming year.
Uncertainty may come with opportunity
It’s been a turbulent 12 months and while things may look uncertain for 2023, there are opportunities to be had. The great resignation has become the great reflection as candidates are considering what really matters to them. Many are looking for employers that share their values. Employees that feel a shared sense of purpose with the company they work for are less likely to job-hop. Working on your employer value proposition could help you attract and retain talent.
We have seen a slight decrease in the rate of economic inactivity. This may lead to new pools of talent emerging, as skilled workers come out of retirement and embrace new opportunities for flexible working.
Whatever the future may hold Morson is here to support you to attract, retain and develop the best talent. As a Morson client we listen, identify opportunities and curate solutions that are designed for you. Our solutions are for organisations seeking to enhance their capability, who need flexible, adaptable solutions to help scale, brand-led strategies to inspire, screening solutions to comply, ED&I insight to transform, training to develop or technology to streamline and accelerate. We offer a depth and agility that is unique to the Morson Group.
