British Energy
British Energy is the UK’s largest producer of electricity and employs 5,500 people across 14 sites in the UK.
Early 2006, British Energy contacted Independent RPO: even though their recruitment processes were very robust, particularly in the area of equal opportunities, the company recognised that changes were needed.
Independent RPO introduced an outsourced strategic recruitment team covering all permanent hiring for British Energy.
Successes to date have included:
- Introduction of account managers.
- Greater use of employer brand, maximising the British Energy brand in recruitment advertisements and on the careers page better reflects the strengths of the organisation and the opportunities that exist; this has combined with the other tactics to enable British Energy to reach a much wider audience with a stronger proposition than ever before.
- Launch of new careers webpage. British Energy’s website has undergone dramatic changes. Gordon Bell, Corporate Reporting Advisor at British Energy has worked closely with the Independent team to create a careers site that is genuinely in formative.
- Introduction of a great range of tools for Hiring Managers to provide more routes to the candidate marketplace through
1. Targeted use of web advertising,
2. Audited and managed preferred supplier lists
3. Strategic use of agencies/headhunting
operations.
The team is involved in the hiring of over 40 new staff every month, across all disciplines of the BE business. They are working closely with internal and station HR teams/hiring managers across the
Independent RPO introduced the team of four Recruitment Specialists to British Energy’s central operation as an outsourced function, however we don’t limit our client’s choice of whether to ‘insource’ or ‘outsource’ at any stage of our agreements. In February 2007, BE took our offer of taking the team on as permanent members of staff and as their central in-house recruitment function.
The team is continuing to make great cost saving month after month and through the use of direct routes to hire, have saved BE over £600k in the last 6 months alone.
