‘Good enough’ isn’t good enough for CSP Recruitment or our customers. Our culture is articulated around augmenting our clients’ productivity besides delivering suitable workers to the right place at the right time. Here we describe the main points of our delivery and productivity strategies and tactics – tried, tested and proven with our current customers – to whom we are happy to provide unchaperoned access for prospective clients.

On-time delivery of sufficient, suitable and productive workers

As Eastern European economies continue to catch up on those of Western Europe and Brexit rumbles on, the UK continues to see a significant slowing down of candidate availability nationwide. However, our clients continue to benefit from our innovative resourcing activities and to enjoy a national average of 96.8% on-time fulfilment rate, rising to 99.5% fulfilment within 90 minutes of scheduled start-time – figures validated by our customers and amongst the very highest rates in the industry.

These fulfilment levels provide significant productivity and efficiency gains for our customers, allowing their managers to focus on their jobs rather than their agencies. Besides our high levels of candidate attraction and retention, they are bolstered by our pool of primed replacements standing by, and pre-shift check-ins being conducted by our 24 hour Nightline service. Very often we are able to replace a ‘no show’ before their scheduled start-time, removing an enduring headache for front-line managers and providing cost-effective operations for senior management.

We focus on building talent pools for our clients, and the designated Account Team is tasked with maintaining consistent contact with candidates to ensure that we have up to date information on their circumstances and availability.  This information is used to drive our national and international candidate attraction strategy as we maintain a worker availability of at least 125% of forecasted requirements to ensure that we can respond to unanticipated peaks.

Robust and innovative candidate attraction, screening, selection and induction activities have produced attrition rates of under 20%  – much lower than the industry standard of over 40% and again bolstering our customers’ productivity and minimising the time management spend on flexible staffing issues.

Annualised hours contracts: To minimise attrition and bolster productivity, CSP will, wherever possible, engage its workers on an annualised hours basis, guaranteeing a minimum number or hours per year to its workers and avoiding disruptive staff turnover caused by temporarily higher pay-rates being offered locally at peak.

Productivity and Performance Management

We deploy a number of processes to monitor and manage both our own and our workers’ performance, including:

• KPI-centred SLA – working documents that show each KPI target.  Performance and any variances are monitored and underpin management information and the review process.  Our performance and that of our workers is reviewed against the SLA on a weekly basis to enable us to rectify any potential issues immediately, rather than waiting for the next batch of MI or the next review meeting. Whilst fully bespoke for each customer, SLA metrics typically include:
  • Forecasting accuracy
  • Fulfilment rates
  • No shows and replacements
  • Retention rates
  • Attendance & Punctuality
  • Rejection ratios
  • Recruitment ratios
  • Compliance
  • Induction & Training
  • Worker Performance
  • Management Information
  • Invoicing accuracy

• Management Information is updated and analysed weekly to enable an objective review of performance and identification of any trends.  This provides tangible evidence of our performance against agreed KPIs, identifying opportunities for continuous improvement and forming the basis of the review process.
• Feedback is formally collated from Line Managers and workers to identify trends across an individual team/department or the contract as a whole.  Any such trends are investigated, and solutions for improvement proposed.  Formal evaluation of our own performance is conducted via questionnaires regarding:
  • Helpfulness and professionalism of our Account Team
  • Understanding of the business requirement
  • Speed of response
  • Overall quality of staff supplied
  • Overall quality of service delivered

Questionnaire results are used to underpin continuous improvement and staff recognition.

• Feedback is also garnered from our workers regarding the service provided to them by the Account Team, and Exit interviews conducted to support retention and enable review of our service from a 360-degree perspective.

• Managing Productivity and Attrition: Our high productivity and low attrition rates are a result of our integrated approach to supplying flexible labour. We do not consider our job to be finished when the worker turns up. We continue to focus on:
  • competency based interviewing
  • skills & aptitude testing
  • tailored induction and orientation
  • performance and skill set benchmarking
  • formal feedback mechanisms backed by defined mentoring and performance management escalation
  • worker welfare activities
  • Apprentice training programme – provided free of charge to our customers, CSP delivers one and two-year apprenticeships such as Performance Manufacturing Operations and Business Improvements & Lean Manufacturing  – all part of our joined-up approach to productivity, attrition and employer of choice branding

• Skills Testing: assessment of appropriate skills and aptitude. Standard competency-based interviewing and testing includes (where appropriate to the customer and the role):
  • Language skills and Basic numeracy
  • Dexterity
  • Colour-blindness
• For skilled and semi-skilled roles, we provide tailored competency-based interviews and bespoke skills testing in consultation with the customer

• Induction:
  • Full briefing provided to ensure the candidate understands duties and responsibilities.  All recruiting Consultants spend time on site, job shadowing, so they are able to brief accurately and answer candidate questions. Induction is industry-sector specific and developed in co-operation with each of our customers, delivered in two key stages (sample content below):

• Offsite induction
  • Terms & conditions (including pay, Holiday pay, pension, benefits, timesheet process, parental leave, sickness/absence reporting, timekeeping, queries, etc.).
  • Client site rules and procedures (e.g. Hierarchy, Health & Safety, Equality & Diversity, Conduct, Alcohol/Recreational Drugs, Smoking, etc.)
  • Targets and performance management
  • Appearance and hygiene
  • Guide to Assignment
• Onsite induction
  • Site tour and orientation
  • Health & Safety, Hygiene, PPE
  • Manual handling
  • Industry and/or Customer-specific modules
  • Work Trial
  • Biometric attendance recording preparation

We also meet with the workers to ensure they are settling in, address any issues and discuss performance at suitable intervals too through our Mentoring & Disciplinary process.

Additional value-adding options which underpin our productivity strategies

• Index-linked Margins: CSP is confident enough in its ability to augment productivity that it will share the pain of under-performance with its clients. Should we fall short of pre-agreed KPIs, we will accept a reduction in our margins for the period of under-delivery. This provides you with the reassurance that we do not intend to fail on our promises, that you will receive a financial benefit to help compensate for a loss in productivity and in the unlikely event of under-delivery the situation will be rectified very quickly indeed
• Seasonal Rate Structure: Many agency users suffer increased attrition at peak periods in the year such as Quarter 4, as other employers enter the market with temporarily higher rates. Where appropriate, CSP will operate a two-tier pay and charge rate structure so that the necessary measures to protect your workforce can be budgeted for. We charge no additional margin on the higher pay rates
• Performance and Longevity Bonus: Also designed to improve productivity and reduce attrition at peak periods, this scheme allows you to encourage longevity and performance without incurring additional margin to CSP
• Protected Occupation Guarantee: Many prospective clients complain that whilst their agency enjoys the benefit of supplying lots of low or unskilled labour, some more skilled jobs such as FLTs go unfilled, and they have to spend time and extra money on sourcing them from other agencies. CSP undertakes to raise the pay-rates if necessary to find the more skilled personnel without altering our charge to you – even if we make a loss. If we are enjoying the benefit of the bulk of your business, then you should not have to go elsewhere for the more difficult roles. We consider it a loss leader to retain the bulk of your profitable business.