Scaling Smart: The Impact of Project RPO on a Leading Pension Provider’s Talent Strategy

When you need to tighten up your talent strategy and get the right people on board to achieve your goals, sometimes you need a helping hand that works with you flexibly to address your needs.

That’s exactly what a Project RPO can do for you.

As a flexible recruitment solution, Project RPO offers many of the benefits of outsourcing all your recruitment to a resourcing partner, but without the long-term commitment. It can be delivered as a “one off” engagement, working as an extension of your in-house talent team to source, screen and deliver the right candidates or teams as and when you need them. Basically, acting as a helping hand, saving time for you to navigate the day-to-day BAU.

And this is what the Sanderson team are experts in and is something we recently implemented for a leading workplace pensions provider who needed to bolster and upskill their customer service teams.

Our team thrives on absorbing each client’s culture and acting as an extension of their brand, designing and delivering bespoke solutions that successfully meets client challenges and objectives, so read on to find out how we did just that….

What was the challenge?

The client approached Sanderson as they were looking for a partner that could deliver a bespoke solution to address two of their resourcing challenges.

Getting the right candidates 

Firstly, they needed to attract and select high-quality customer service professionals across various UK regions. Having embedded ourselves with the talent teams, we quickly ascertained that they were struggling with candidate calibre. With customer service and telephony roles crucial to their business operations, they were facing issues attracting candidates that had experience here as well as in a financial services environment.

Demand was increasing and they needed to recruit approximately 120 customer service candidates in only 12 months.

Hiring manager knowledge gaps 

Secondly, they needed to design a capability improvement programme to upskill their hiring manager and talent team community on interview best practices and decision making so they can better promote their brand, while also selecting high quality candidates.

What was our solution? 

Our Project RPO team quickly set to work to address both of these challenges, breaking it down into two flexible workstreams:

Attraction and selection

Within the 12-month timeline, we successfully recruited 12-15 candidates that reached the desired quality benchmarks every month for 12 months. This was achieved by designing bespoke attraction channels such as proactive sourcing, talent mapping, social media accounts and targeted advertisements (which were run by our teams) and geo-marketing campaigns.

We then implemented a fluid but structured selection process that both delivers an outstanding candidate and hiring manager experience. The selection process was broken down into multiple stages including pre-defined candidate qualification criteria for recruiters to work towards, a quality assurance call with the Sanderson team before an interview with the client team following a new structure implemented by us.

Hiring manager training

We also collaborated with their internal hiring manager and talent teams to design and develop an interview training programme that was delivered via multiple workshops. This was to ensure the hiring manager community identify and select appropriate skill sets and behaviours that will add significant value to the organisation, as well as ensuring they adequately promote the organisations brand when selecting candidates.

As this was a Project RPO and so the client still retains overall control of their recruitment strategies, we ensured this training was future-proofed so that upon completion of the Project, the internal teams are well placed to train each other on the tools, process and techniques we’ve set them up with.

Speaking with the client’s Director of Customer Engagement, they said:

“Sanderson quickly recognised our resource challenges and invested real time and energy in understanding our needs. Through their commitment and collaboration, they’ve built a strong working relationship with us and have become a trusted and valued partner.”

What we achieved together

Following the completion of the first stages of this Project RPO, the client has already seen incredible results like:

• 85%+ fulfilment of intakes within the first 6 months of the service
• 80 started or future starters
• 60+ head count filled
• 83% interview to offer ratio
• 90% score on candidate satisfaction surveys
• Reduced hiring manager touch time on interviews
• Hiring manager training complete
• The right candidates hired with the necessary experience
• Candidates feel listened to and supported throughout the process

Could we help you achieve similar results? 

Our Project RPO solutions are designed for businesses who need access to talent acquisition expertise but are not looking to outsource everything. Our solution can be delivered as a “one off” engagement as an extension of your teams to source, screen and deliver the right people as and when you need them. As your resourcing partner, Sanderson will act as a helping hand, saving time for you to navigate your people strategies.

If you’re interested to find out more, head over to our Project RPO page here.

Get in touch

We’re always open to a chat to discuss how we may be able to help you achieve similar results, so please do reach out.