Spring 2020 will forever be remembered as the point in time in which the global economy came to a screaming halt, forcing businesses to rethink necessities vs nice-to-haves.
It will be remembered as the point in time in which virtual work became the norm and offices become obsolete. And unfortunately, we will remember that some jobs became more important than others.
Many organizations are attempting to “optimize” their business due to the ongoing global pandemic. This includes staff evaluations to determine which positions are most vital to generating revenue and downsizing or outsourcing parts of the business to become more flexible to ensure maximized profitability, or at worst, mitigate losses.
While Human Resources (HR) has emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic as an absolute necessity, talent acquisition professionals have often been one of the main targets of layoffs. However, as organizations begin to ramp the businesses back up, organizations are attempting now more than ever, to do more with less. Middle management & HR have been forced to pick up the pieces to assist with recruiting efforts
As an alternative, we have been working with our partners to adjust our Recruitment Processing Outsourcing (RPO) partnerships to best fit the needs of their businesses. For healthcare clients that meant a rapid ramp-up in many urban markets, initially. For our non-essential partners, that means reducing our team size to best fit the needs of the current market but also now have begun to scale the team back up without losing organizational knowledge.
RPO is a uniquely strategic business partner that provides a strategic advantage in times of economic lows and highs. Why, you ask?
RPOs provide maximum flexibility. Organizations can scale recruiting capacity as hiring demands to dictate—giving you, as an employer, more significant control of overhead costs. How many of the RPO's recruiting resources will be needed to support the business?
Additionally, RPOs manage the recruiting team so you don’t have to. Your team can now spend its time on more value-added activities, such as HR/business strategy alignment, workforce planning, and HR innovation.
Thanks to a shared risk partnership, RPOs are motivated by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), SMART Goals, and Success Fees. Often, RPOs fees & bonuses are tied directly to their performance. That’s great for their business partners because they are paying for performance, not exorbitant salaries.
RPOs must build great relationships with hiring managers and HR leadership to ensure productivity measures are met and efficient.
RPOs are required to be efficient to maximize their own business. At their core, they are a recruiting company. Your business may be manufacturing widgets or providing healthcare, but recruiting is an ancillary business function that supports the organization. Unfortunately, many recruiters tend to be early-career professionals. Of the 610,000+ profiles on LinkedIn with “recruiter” in their title greater than 50% have less than 5 years of work experience. The average 25-34-year-old typical work tenure is about 2.75 years.
This means you are constantly retraining a very small percentage of your non-revenue generating workforce just for them to move on in a few years. In a small to medium-sized business, you are losing a great deal of organizational knowledge with each departure and there often isn’t much room for growth in the recruiting industry. At an RPO, recruiting is the lifeblood. It is the primary means of survival which means individuals are competing for opportunities for growth, searching for efficiencies, using new technology, and maximizing contacts to succeed.
Since much of what RPOs do is performance-based, recruiters at RPOs are required to maximize output while also seeking out great candidates. This competitive atmosphere means you have a finely tuned recruitment machine always working to improve and provide quality candidates as quickly as possible.
That's where RPOs provide a real advantage. By deploying a fully dedicated, high caliber recruiting team to represent your brand, every communication becomes an opportunity to reinforce your brand and establish a positive first impression for your organization.
How can an RPO help you get your organization ready for when the market returns?
You might be wondering how your organization can bring back non-revenue generating roles at a time when the economy is a complete mess due to shutdowns and quarantines. There is no one size fits all solution (or at least there shouldn't be). We know that it takes a holistic approach to get optimal results.
Partnering with an RPO means having a team to help you identify what success should look like for your company and prioritize the factors that will drive toward that success. And there's no better time than right now to do that.
If you are looking for an alternative option for recruitment, schedule a meeting with us here or if you would like to learn more about recruitment process outsourcing click here