Northern Foods
Northern Foods plc, a FTSE 250 company, is a leader in the food production industry within the UK & Ireland, with a turnover of £888 million (06/07). The company employs over 10,500 people across 23 sites.
When a change programme to bring together 30 diverse brands under three separate operating divisions was introduced, the company faced a number of HR challenges.
They needed a complete centralised HR strategy in place to be able to structure their recruitment and talent process, to regain control of their processes and reduce their cost.
They asked Independent RPO to audit the existing processes before making recommendations on how to move forward.
In June 2005, Independent RPO introduced an on-site team of five at the Northern Foods head office, in Leeds.
Successes to date have included:
- Bringing consistency to the recruitment process through a series of measures including :
- A new approach to building and maintaining a Preferred Supplier List (PSL)
- A better use of the employer brand within all recruitment communications.
- Introduction of an in-house recruitment technology to cover authorisation, reporting and internal employee application capability.
- Introduction of the Resourcing Forum, with the sponsorship of HR, which included representation from all divisions, to ensure all areas of the business have a voice on the issue of recruitment.
- Introduction of a temporary labour PSL using three central suppliers
- The creation of standard terms for executive search activity.
- The team has also managed two separate recruitment freezes and rolled out a consistent interview and selection process, through Line Manager training.
- For auditing purposes, Independent provides monthly vacancy and KPI reporting to board level and has already undertaken a quality survey which showed that 70% of customers were satisfied with the overall service. Areas for improvement were identified and actioned.
Independent RPO has saved Northern Foods over £2.2 million, reduced their cost per hire by 49%, their time to recruit by 49% and has recruited 1561 people, 433 of which were at managerial grades.
