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Blog posted by: Amy Clark – Category Buyer of HR Services at YPO, 24 March 2022.

CASE STUDY

Seven Force Police collaborate to form a managed service for temporary staff

In response to continued financial pressure on the Police Force funding across the UK, Seven Police Forces - Essex, Kent, Norfolk, Suffolk, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire took the commercial decision to jointly form a managed service for the supply of temporary staff across all locations under the YPO HR Services and Solutions framework.

The challenge

The Police Forces had been hit with budget cuts of c19% over the last 10 years yet were also under pressure, following the recent pledge to find 20,000 new officers, there is a wide variety of logistical challenges that come with the recruitment process.

Having carried out internal reviews, they discovered issues with the hiring process, in particular the length of time it was taking for background screening. Thousands of police officers and civilian staff had yet to complete full vetting, placing limitations on service. The Police Forces therefore decided to procure a new managed service for the supply of temporary workers to enable the resourcing of a wide range of roles, skills and levels across 24/7/365 emergency services organisations.

The solution

Following a competitive tender process, under the YPO HR Services and Solutions framework, Randstad was awarded the contract and designed a bespoke solution for Seven Forces. They designed a hybrid MSP solution, maximising direct fulfilment for each of the Force’s non-specialist and corporate categories. This model additionally recognises the need to engage specialist suppliers on a neutral basis for niche roles (particularly police-specific roles) in order to provide assurance of rapid fulfilment against all profiles to support the direct fulfilment categories.

The roles in scope are:

• Admin and clerical roles
• Finance roles
• Legal support roles
• IT roles
• Executive/senior roles
• Facilities roles
• Investigator roles
• Call handling roles
• Statement takers
• Administrative roles
• Occupational health roles
• Project managers
• Surveyors

The solution also includes the implementation of Randstand’s Nétive Vendor Management System (VMS). This system, a SaaS is built on the Salesforce Platform and supports the end-to-end contingent workforce lifecycle, including: recruitment, procurement, contracting, compliance files, time capture and invoicing.

The outcome 

Seven Forces was Randstad’s first Covid response remote implementation and this naturally changed their way of working. Randstand were forced to challenge and adapt their methodology to working to suit these new circumstances, particularly building new relationships remotely and with the uncertainty of how long this would continue. Randstad now have a new blueprint for successful implementation with proven outcomes. In the first full year of the partnership, they have built excellent relationships with the hiring community and supply chain.

Seven Forces were also facing a challenge with off-contract agency spend, so Randstad focused on engaging with IT and Occupational Health agencies in order to onboard them into the framework. In the last six months they have onboarded five off-contract agencies, resulting in a considerable saving for the police force.

Supplier management

For Seven Forces, Randstad worked with key stakeholders and hiring managers to understand their requirements at implementation. They were able to ascertain from these meetings that fully understanding their specialist roles was crucial to delivering high quality candidates. Randstand therefore agreed a programme of strategic briefing calls for Seven Forces specialist roles with 2nd and 3rd tier providers in attendance as part of the effective sourcing solution.

This interaction with hiring managers was valuable in ensuring the 2nd and 3rd tier providers fully understood the role and were therefore able to efficiently deliver suitable, quality candidates every time.

Randstand have further developed a strong partnership between Seven Forces and the suppliers through collaborative monthly review meetings. These meetings provide a forum to discuss the supplier’s performance and any important discoveries for the roles filled that month. The below testimonials from Randstand’s key suppliers demonstrates the success in creating a partnership between Seven Forces, Randstad and their supply chain:

Martin Cookson, Team Leader – Service Care Solutions

“We enjoy working on the Seven Forces Contract with Randstad - they are very engaging with their supply chain and we have bi-weekly meetings to discuss current and future bookings - we truly feel like a partner within the contract.”

Luke Starling, Recruitment Consultant – Red Snapper Group

“Randstad work hard to engage with all suppliers within the contract – very honest and they always pick the phone up to discuss any future bookings or any engagement issues with compliance documents – they respond quickly via a shared inbox specific to the contract.”

If you have any questions or would like to know more about our Managing Temporary and Permanent Recruitment framework, please get in touch with the team.