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26th Sep, 2022

Craig Lewis
Author
Craig Lewis
Job Title
Senior Content Writer
Organisation
Reed Talent Solutions

We were named as winners of The D&I Award and The ESG Award at a ceremony on, in London, on Friday night (23 September 2022).

Reed Talent Solutions was also highly commended in The Cornerstone Client Award, as well as having been named as a finalist in the iCIMS Long-Term Partnership Award.

We were the only provider to win two nominated awards, and on top of that be shortlisted for the Talent Solutions Provider of the Year Award, fighting off competition from 28 companies across 10 different awards.

Reed Talent Solution’s Managing Director, Lee Gudgeon, said I am really proud that our services and corporate responsibility which have been highly impactful for our clients, have been recognised by a leading panel of Talent Acquisition experts.

The judges heaped praise on Reed Talent Solutions:

The D&I Award:

The judges said the impact our solution had on local communities stood out and was streets ahead of any other nomination.

The ESG Award:

A combination of the Reed Group’s activities and our social values programmes led the judges to say we don’t just talk the talk, but also walk the walk when it comes to ESG.

Our submissions to the awards showcased some of the work we've undertaken:

The D&I Award:

For the world’s largest ever trial of convalescent plasma, NHS Blood & Transplant (NHSBT) were tasked by Department for Health & Social Care to collect plasma to aid research and to support treatment of hospitalised Covid-19 patients.

NHSBT approached Reed Talent Solutions (RTS) for a workforce solution which could be implemented at pace.

We provided an end-to-end attraction and onboarding proposal to achieve the ambitious targets. With usual implementation timescales and face-to-face meetings not an option, we had the proven capability to implement the necessary technology and to work at pace.

With the first delivery milestones needing to be achieved within six weeks due to a rise in Covid-19 cases, RTS was able to offer the experience, flexibility and compliance needed to ensure success.

With ethnic minority communities being more adversely affected by Covid, an immediate challenge for the project was to engage with communities and increase ethnic minority doners to support research, treat people and save more lives.

To achieve this RTS was tasked with sourcing faith and belief managers and donor recruiters to work closely with ethnic minority communities, raising awareness and implementing long-term partnerships.

Through our commitment to diversity and access to talent we undertook a direct headhunting campaign and filled all requirements within two weeks.

The ESG Award

Since Sir Alec Reed opened the first Reed office in 1960, his ethos of active engagement in charitable and social causes has been integral to the company’s vision and values.

We aim to be a good global citizen by improving the lives of individuals, being actively involved in social and charitable causes and by being Carbon Neutral®. We are committed to education and the development of people.

At Reed we value diversity and are committed to having an inclusive culture across all areas of our business, where we can all feel safe to be ourselves at work. This can be seen with the introduction of our diversity champions, who educate co-members across Reed about the significant events for diverse groups, educational videos and insights from champions.

At Reed our purpose is improving lives through work:

  • We are fair, open and honest:

     

    We treat everyone with fairness and respect, act with integrity, and are true to our commitments 

  • We take ownership:

     

    We respond swiftly to execute our promises, take responsibility for providing solutions, and hold ourselves accountable for our actions  

  • We work together:

     

    We work in partnership and build sustainable trusted relationships, value a diverse workforce and respect the contributions of all, and we support our customers and colleagues in achieving their goals 

The Cornerstone Client Service Award

In September 2021, we began working with the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), recruiting, training and deploying 1,300 permanent test centre associates to run driving theory tests at 136 locations across the UK, from the Shetland Islands to Southend-on-Sea.

The DVSA were aware the transfer of service provider would have to be seamless over the course of a weekend. With staff not qualifying for TUPE, they needed confidence they would have the staff, infrastructure and properties secured to provide tests to communities across the UK.

Supporting business-as-usual testing and a backlog exaggerated by the pandemic, a high-quality successful service was vital.

We created a one-of-a-kind RPO solution to overcome this, which involved building a talent pool of permanent workers for each of their 136 locations in May 2021, that through a robust project plan kept candidates engaged during a buoyant jobs market until the service went live in September 2021.

Successfully overcoming the backlog, we have now created an infrastructure for staff, recruited and trained a workforce of over 1,300 permanent employees and are deploying them onto 2,000 shifts a week with a 99% fulfilment rate. So that driving theory tests across the UK can go ahead as planned.

The iCIMS Long-Term Partnership Award

Since 2017, Reed Talent Solutions (RTS) have worked in partnership with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) as their managed service provider of contingent workers.

Providing 16 authorities with a collaborative and complete non-permanent solution that has a clear social value strategy, a robust candidate attraction strategy, cost savings and high vetting and compliance assurance.

Before we began our partnership, GMCA were using a low-touch, system-driven neutral vendor model that was focused on speed of hire over experience.

As our partnership has developed, we have been on a journey with the authorities to create a high–touch, bespoke solution. That gives them access to the latest recruitment technology, streamlined local agency supply chains, delivered 30% cost savings across consultancy spend and invests in social value initiatives for the local community.

To build a real partnership, we created a GMCA based team that understood all the specific geographic and local challenges across the authorities with targets to engage with stakeholders and ensure we deliver high-touch support.

This local team has allowed us to keep social value at the heart of everything we do, ensuring we give back to the authorities' local communities, spend the Manchester pound in Manchester and enabled us to set-up steering groups and events to build real partnerships across the authorities, suppliers and workforce.

In the most recent re-award, we focused on delivering positive social value for the community. Our Manchester team have created a social value charter for employability, which has involved visiting schools in Salford to promote volunteer hours, working with charities such as Mustard Tree to use volunteer hours to combat poverty and homelessness, and providing care leavers with employability support through the care leavers covenant.

Previous success

The news comes on the back of success in the 2021 awards when Reed Talent Solutions captured the Talent Solution Provider of the Year, Long-Term Partnership and Candidate Experience awards.

It also follows Reed Talent Solutions’ recent success in being named as a ‘major player’ in the Everest PEAK Matrix.

Read more about our work and how we have helped our clients achieve success on our case studies page.


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