As part of their response to the EU transition, Ashford Borough Council has been tasked with managing a port for goods coming into the UK by July. The challenge for Ashford Borough Council was to engage a new Managed Service Provider who could support the hiring of the new roles, whilst also giving fair access to the opportunities for their existing PSL. After reviewing the market, our Neutral Vendor Managed Service was an ideal solution, allowing them to neutrally release roles on a level playing field, to both their existing suppliers and build a new supply chain with agencies to ensure all the roles were filled in the tight deadlines.
"A Port Health Authority is being set up within the boundaries of the Ashford Borough which will be run and managed by Ashford Borough Council. The site based at the Sevington Inland Border Facility will be responsible for carrying out the checks required for food hauliers following the UK's transition from the EU. This was, and is, a significant and exciting project for us and we plan to recruit an additional 129 employees by July this year."
Joy Cross, Human Resources Manager at Ashford Borough Council
Setting up the contract close to Christmas, we have been working with Ashford Borough Council to get suppliers on-board, implement the system and enrol agencies in a short time. Within the first week of January, we needed the vacancies live on the system to follow the existing project plan of posting roles, receiving CV’s and organising interviews.
"In order to efficiently manage the recruitment associated with this large project, and after following our procurement processes, we decided to use Matrix as a neutral vendor to recruit our 60 technical staff. We were working to extremely tight timeframes and Matrix were able to provide us with a rapid implementation programme which enabled us to get up and running in a matter of weeks."
Joy Cross, Human Resources Manager at Ashford Borough Council
With these roles being new to the area, there were a lot of questions around; whether candidates in the area would have the required skillset, what salary expectations would be and whether they should hire Permanent for long term success or Temporary / FTC due to the tight deadline. To answer these questions, our first step was to engage the supply chain as soon as possible, so our Implementation team set-up our system to ensure that suppliers knew all the job details and were looking for the right skills and abilities of workers. We then initially engaged with 5 or 6 suppliers to understand the local market. Combining local intelligence, our market knowledge of managing processes and dealing with the unknown in recruitment, we created a strategic plan with Ashford Borough Council. Which led to us posting adverts over Christmas for both Senior roles that required specific qualifications and Junior roles where we were looking for strong transferable skills.
Within a couple of weeks, we realised the candidate pool was a bigger than anyone expected, with strong CV’s coming through for hard to fill Senior roles and a good volume of candidates coming through for the junior opportunities. As part of our Neutral Vendor Managed Service model for Ashford Borough Council, we also introduced our CDL Payroll solution which involved a team working with Ashford Borough Council to share the opportunities on the Council website. This has helped us track filling 10% of the Senior roles directly with the Council, helping them to further reduce costs through the contract. On top of that the majority of the Junior roles are being filled by one of their existing agencies, showcasing the importance of local knowledge and giving equal opportunities to all agencies when releasing roles.
Offers are now being sent out to applicants, to ensure that the Border Facility is ready for April. On top of that, all the of the roles so far have been filled with Permanent workers, which has been great for the long-term support of the Facility. As Ashford Borough Council’s Managed Service Provider, we are currently helping them to co-ordinate the offers.
"Matrix have been very supportive in the process, they have worked effectively to secure specialist agencies in the supply chain, provided rapid implementation, delivered system training to our team and offered expert advice in this field. We have also had fantastic support from our account manager who has assisted us with each step of the process, smoothed out any challenges we have encountered along the way and helped us stay on track."
Joy Cross, Human Resources Manager at Ashford Borough Council
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