Samworth Brothers

The Recruitment Challenge

The Resourcing Team manage both production-based roles and the wider business function positions.

Recruitment was managed using multiple spreadsheets and tools within Office 365. Managing recruitment in this way was challenging, especially with significant volume - 2500 roles per year based on spreadsheets (live roles varying from around 400-900 roles at any one time). This led to inconsistencies in approach and process, manual reporting, and a single point of failure in how recruitment was recorded.

Samworth also recruit within a very diverse labour market but had limited ways to monitor that they were representative of its locations and also to screen to ensure that language standards, experience and right to work in the UK met the minimum requirements.

Following a thorough multi-stage evaluation of Talent Acquisition platforms involving IT and Procurement teams, Eploy’s Applicant Tracking System and Recruitment CRM was selected to put candidate experience at the heart of talent acquisition and recruitment - from raising a request to recruiting and onboarding.

Why recruitment technology was required

“Every role that was recruited for felt like we were starting again as we had no way of knowing if any of the team had spoken to candidates previously or whether they had applied for roles previously and been unsuccessful.”

• The team had to manually search through emails to see whether a candidate had previously been submitted through an agency and whether a fee was due.
• Manual sifts to identify those without the right to work and send a rejection email was time consuming.
• No clear way of measuring the return on investment of job boards.
• Lengthy handovers if anyone in the team went off at short notice, including asking hiring managers for status updates on roles.
• No way of checking that all candidates were responded to or keeping them updated on their applications. This was a manual process using email or phone calls as no self-service was in place.
• Reporting data was gathered manually as requested that resulted in numbers fluctuating and could not be relied upon.
• One process for different types of recruitment (volume recruitment, office based, lower volume, professional skills roles) fell short in delivering a positive impact on hiring.
• Diversity of applications were unable to be monitored using spreadsheets.
• Using email presented a greater risk for GDPR and compliance requirements.

Developing a solution

“It was both the technology and the Sandbox session delivery that set Eploy apart, with visible differences that showed alignment with the values of Samworth Brothers. The ATS technology was easy to use and has proven to be very flexible around the requirements of the business.

“We had clear timeframes and despite our complex structure were able to deliver this project on time. The robustness of the process and support we received from Eploy gave us the confidence to launch the system for all businesses at the same time. This is the only system that we have installed in the Group as a “Big Bang” launch. - Kate Lee, Talent & Resourcing Manager, Samworth Brothers

“We took the opportunity to look at our processes and what the platform could enable us to do in a better way.”

This included looking at:

• Aligning the mapping of the company and subsidiaries/departments/locations of Eploy with the set-up of the HRIS system for consistency Company Hierarchy Import.
• Vacancy Requisition – mapped across to existing processes to automate some of the data population, reducing the requirement from hiring managers.
• Vacancy Authorisation Processes – consistent levels of approvers across the business.
• Hiring Manager permissions to provide increased visibility.
• Offer Details – fields to capture and process route.
• Offer Authorisation Processes – authorisation stages and users, email notifications and reminder stages.
• Recruitment Workflow – set-up different levels of visibility and action stages for high volume and office-based roles.
• Onboarding - built in all contract templates and new starter documentation. These vary for different businesses and could all be incorporated through multiple workflows.
• Subdomain to use for careers pages (candidate portal) – creating a smooth transition between the career pages and the website for candidates using a consistent delivery of visual appeal and on-brand experience.

Delivering Results

• In a candidate short market, being able to use the system as a candidate database and target advertising based on locations and role puts Samworth Brothers ahead of its competitors.
• 78,804 applications were received and automatically sifted through using a killer question.
• 5496 CVs auto rejected, due to right to work checks against requirements. Technology has eliminated manual checks saving at least 1 minute per CV (conservative estimate). That equates to 91 hours saved for the team of visually sifting and manually rejecting. This means that the team can use this time to focus on other activities, speaking to a higher volume of relevant candidates.
• Across all applications, the third highest source for volume of candidates (10,306) is job alerts, sent out automatically by Eploy for candidates who opt-in.

In 2022, Samworth Brothers spent 28% of overall savings/spend total on agency fees. For a 12 month period from Go Live with Eploy, overall savings/spend on agency fees reduced by 8%. This reduction is on track to deliver a £150K saving in the first year of operating Eploy, a target that was set as part of the business case.

Understanding the sourcing metrics has enabled Samworth Brothers to forecast and plan job boards spend for the year ahead. The recruitment metrics are enabling meaningful conversations around contracts based not only on volume of candidates but also on quality through visibility of candidate source and the success of these based on candidates who progress through specific stages of the process.

The automation of onboarding through Eploy has meant that all monthly contracts and new starter documentation is issued within 48 hours. Previously, there was no way to accurately capture the status or time to issue for contracts and this was an administrative task at each site.

The implementation of Eploy has acted as an enabler to:

• Centralise HR Admin function with limited headcount and a consistent approach.
• Create an advertising strategy to identify where and when to advertise by geography or specific role.
• Support Talent and Succession planning and reporting.
• Onboard future businesses as Samworth Brothers grows.
• Leverage a talent database in a candidate short market.
• Use data to inform decision making and feed into wider discussions around skills shortage areas to help action plan for the future.
• Drive prioritisation of tasks for the team.
• Build the employer brand through enhanced candidate experience.

“Eploy have supported us through our build process and combined with Jodie Gilligan, our own Project Manager, they have kept us on track, listened to what we needed and always presented options not just one solution. For our candidates the introduction of the system and our new careers site puts the control back in their hands, with the ability for them to keep track of their applications and sign up to job alerts, so that they don’t miss their perfect next step. The other big win for us is the availability of data, and we look forward to using this going forward to continue to develop our processes and the system as we feel that there is so much more opportunity to grow and we feel that Eploy match our ambitions in terms of that continual eye on the future.” - Kate Lee, Talent & Resourcing Manager, Samworth Brothers