News

MCA MANAGEMENT AWARDS

The MCA Management Awards is one of the most important annual events in the Management Consultancy Association's calendar, in that it recognizes outstanding client delivery and achievement across a range of categories.

Leading insourced recruitment solution provider, CPH Consulting, was a Gold Sponsor for this year's awards, held at the London Hilton Park Lane Hotel on 27th April and hosted by the BBC's Declan Curry.

CPH's joint MD, Jerry Wright, presented the 'Best Small Firm' award to executives from Propaganda, who also won the 'Customer Engagement' category for their work with Seabrook Crisps.

RECRUITMENT OUTSOURCING FOR THE SME - IS IT AN OPTION?

Recruitment Outsourcing (RO) has been proved to work well for large organisations for more than a decade.  But what about for the vast majority of UK companies? - those in the SME (Small to Medium sized Enterprise) category, that employ about 13 million peopole in total and are responsible for almost 50% of UK GDP.

The major corporates have always had the scale and resources to either build an 'in house' recruitment capability, or to outsource their recruitment to one of the large RO service providers.  Smaller businesses haven't had the option - having neither the scale and buying power of large firms, nor the recruitment volumes to make a business case for an 'in house' function.  Typically this means that they have to rely on the most expensive and often least effective option - using agencies to supply candidates - as well as having the burden for all recruitment related activities (screening CVs, interviewing etc) fall on the Directors, and senior executives, who are also responsible for growing and managing the business.

In 2005 Jerry Wright and Scott Russell, the co-founders of CPH Consulting, embarked on a mission to enable SME's to move away from the costly and unhealthy reliance on agencies to managing their own recruitment.  After speaking with the CEO's & MD's of a range of small and medium sized businesses, they formulated a proposition that could provide all the benefits of a fully outsourced recruitment solution to companies that were hiring much smaller numbers of staff.  CPH now supplies experienced recruiters and resourcers to a range of SME's, with their staff working onsite at each client's offices, building and driving a direct recruitment model, underpinned by strong processes and procedures.  "Our solution is totally flexible, and scalable up and down according to a client's hiring requirements.  For those small and emerging companies that are only planning to take on a handful of new staff, we have an 'On Demand' service, where they may have one of our recruiters working with them for just one or two days a week", commented Russell.

So what benefits can an SME expect to get from outsourcing its recruitment?  - the main benefits are a reduction in the cost per hire; a reduction in the 'time to fill' vacancies; an improvement in the quality of candidate they are able to attract, combined with an enhanced 'employer brand'.  Their recruitment ratios (ie the number of interviews conducted to produce an offer) will improve and, most significantly, the amount of time that the Directors and senior managers have to spend on recruitment related matters will fall dramatically.

A recent report by a leading online job board revealed that 22% of staff hired by SME's (more than 50,000 employees per annum) leave their job within the first six months - which is before they have started to add any real value to the business.  However, CPH Consulting's clients have seen a substantial reduction in the new employee first year attrition which they put down to the fact that they are sourcing candidates directly from the market, who have fully bought into the move before an offer is made.  They then stay close to them during their crucial first few months in their new company/role.  "In some cases our recruiters become "buddies" for the people they have brought into the business, and this has a very positive effect", added Russell.

Before embarkinng on the RO route, there are a number of things than an SME needs to do - firstly, have a clear understanding of the time, resources and costs that are currently going into recruitment related activities is essential.  This should enable an accurate assessment to be made of the current average cost per hire.  An understanding of the likely hiring requirement in the year ahead is important, as is an appreciation of any bottlenecks in the current recruitment approach.  An honest assessment of the company's ability to attract the right range, level and quality of staff is necessary before moving  to a recruitment outsourcing model, because there may be other issues that need to be addresses before the outsourced recruitment solution is implemented.  Some RO service providers will help with this initial assessment of the 'as is'.

SME's need to define what they want out of an RO solution and establish their priorities - which may be cost, time, control, structure, consistency and/or expertise.  KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) can then be drawn up and incorporated into a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with the RO service provider.  In choosing an RO provider the company should look at firms with experience of operating successfully in the SME market - "It is a very, very different proposition providing RO services to a small to medium sized enterprise compared to a large corporate with a strong employer brand, big recruitment budgets and, usually, lots of in house expertise to draw on.  Running and building our own SME, we know exactly the challenges that these business owners and Directors are facing", says Russell.  "Our ultimate objective with all our clients is to convert their recrutiment capability from a cost centre into a real business asset".

The relationship between the company and the RO service provider should, in time, become a genuine partnership - the RO firm becomes an integral part of the business, participating in the company's strategic planning, which inevitably has to have a 'people dimension' to it.  The closer to the business that the RO service provider becomes, then the greater the value derived from the realtionship.

TWO AT THE TOP CAN WORK

In today's difficult economic times, there is even more of a case for sharing the responsibility of running and maintaining a successful business.

It is not uncommon in large companies to have joint CEO's, but it happens much less in smaller, owner managed businesses, which are typically led either by the founder or an appointed MD.

However, there are just as many benefits for a small company in adopting the strategy of splitting the CEO/MD's role and responsilibies - particularly in the current economic climate, where there is a strong case for halving the stress and pressure, and all that goes with managing a business through a downturn.

One example of a small firm where two heads are proving better than one is CPH Consulting, a specialist recruitment outsourcing firm.  Founded in 2005 by the Joint MD's Jerry Wright and Scott Russell, CPH has enjoyed significant growth with revenues for the last financial year up 50% on the previous year and, despite a challenging market, they are budgeting for a further 15% growth in revenue in 2009.

Wright says "We are very different individuals, which is probably why it works well between us.  Scott is the more sales, creative and ideas orientated type whilst my strong points lie in being more delivery focussed, operational and attentive to detail".  Russell adds the "The real key is knowing, and acknowledging, both your own and your fellow MD's strengths and weaknesses".

Frequent communication is crucial to success and although Russell and his family moved out to Geneva over the summer to allow his wife to progress her career, the routine is the same.  "We speak and exchange e-mails several times a day on everything from specific client activities, to new business opportunities, through to what we are going to do for the staff Christmas outing" says Wright.

Core to the success of MD job sharing is the frequent communication, in addition to complementary skills and, of course, trust.  There are times when decisions have to be made quickly, without the opportunity for discussion.  "We trust each other to make a judgement for the good of the business.  Sometimes we get it right, sometimes not  - the key is that we have full confidence in that we both put the best interests of the company into each decision", says Russell.

Decisions are reviewed at subsequent board meetings, to see what lessons can be learned.  Wright warns, "What you must avoid at all costs is having a blame culture, either between the two of you or, indeed, within the company at all".

CPH Consulting, which specialises in providing RO (Recruitment Outsourcing) services to SME's (Small & Medium sized Enterprises), has made the most of Wright and Russell's combined skills and experience to build its business, "Jerry comes from a more purist executive recruitment background, whereas I have spent a number of years in the outsourcing industry, working for big players in the BPO arena.  This means that we bring a different perspective to the market.  We are both in complete alignment that there is a great opportunity for us - up until our market entry it was a commonly held view that outsourcing recruitment only works for large corporates.

Over the past 3-4 years we have demonstrated that all the benefits that a large company achieves from recruitment outsourcing are available to much smaller and emerging companies.  Some of our clients are making as few as 10-15 hires a year, savings by building and managing a direct recruitment model for a company which removes their need to use recruitment agencies", summarises Russell.

Leading a business can be challenging enough in a strong economy so in these difficult times, there is a definite case for two at the top - it may even cut those sleepless nights!