Engineering

Client Overview

West Yorkshire

Established in 1932, privately owned and world leaders in their field of design and the manufacture of machinery for bakeries and the food manufacturing industry. Located in rural Leeds, the company employs circa 175 people including skilled engineers, technical and support staff. Turnover has risen over recent years from £4m to an anticipated £30m in the current year.

The Challenge

The company adheres to strict levels of headcount and is reliant upon agency staff to provide the flexibility to increase production capacity and maintain delivery times as and when demand increases, therefore avoiding costly demurrage charges.

Historical Recruitment Approaches

Historically the company has been rather ‘old school’ in its approach to attracting new resources, relying on word of mouth, employee referrals and the odd newspaper advert. These methods invariably failed to meet the needs so agencies would be contacted at the last minute to come to the rescue.

The Approach

The Works engaged with the company as a specialist engineering agency by spending two days with them to fully understand the skill sets required, compiling job and people specifications to gain a clear and accurate description of what a “perfect candidate” looked like for each of the most frequently required roles.

The company did not have the luxury of a human resources team so The Works designed a tailored made recruitment process for them. Using a CRM system with an applicant tracking and management system, social media networks were established, recruitment fairs and events attended, employee referral schemes set up, access to all the leading cv boards with intelligent “skill watchdog” alerts to ensure a “talent pool” was always available ready to supply within hours of the clients needs being identified.

Previously agency workers had been paid less than the company’s permanent employees during the first 12 weeks however the client appreciated the benefit of paying parity from day one to assist in attracting the right skills from around the region.

The company also realised that by using a number of agencies it absorbed more time internally to co-ordinate activities so The Works was awarded a sole agency contract for an initial period of 12 months. The relationship has developed well over time and The Works has now been the sole agency provider for over 8 years, with many contract staff taken on permanently when the security of their forward order book is guaranteed.

On – Going Solution

Through attendance at regular review meetings The Works are kept up to date with the clients production forecasts well in advance, ensuring pre-assessed candidates are ready and waiting in the wings. Candidates are shown around the client’s premises and pre-inducted by The Works team therefore saving the company time. Timesheets are imported directly from the clients time recording system ensuring 100% accuracy and zero wage queries. Holiday requests are recorded in the same fashion so the client can evaluate against their MRP system and plan accordingly.

The Works has become a true partner and recognised supplier of choice to the company and if a prospective employee approaches them they are simply redirected to The Works.

Costs and MI

The Works provides weekly and monthly financial analysis of basic hours, overtime, cost centre/ department head usage and KPI information showing attendance and timekeeping.

The client is charged a fixed cost management fee per person per week so they know in advance what their expenditure is going to be based upon an average week for their financial forecasting.

The savings, both in monetary terms and time, have been immense and the streamlining to sole supplier has simplified the communication channels – previously of “too many cooks” (excuse the pun!)

Result

100% order fulfilment within 24 hours of request – no mean task as the majority of vacancies involve rare skill sets.

Demurrage charges have reduced by 80% and 35 contract staff have now become permanent members of their staff.

Client Feedback

“I have dealt with The Works for some years and based on their recent performance we decided to single source from them for all our temporary labour requirements. Their service is to a high standard as well as being highly competitive. Our needs tend to vary frequently both in terms of the numbers of personnel we require and also skills but they have been able to match and satisfy our requirements and will often respond late into the evening to achieve this. I would not hesitate to recommend to others The Works for the supply of temporary personnel”.

 

“A great business needs great people; we recruit them. We are The Works”