The challenge:
Our client, Sheffield City Council, was seeking a proactive managed agency contract that could offer:
Efficient and compliant ways of ordering temporary and permanent staff
Online help and in-person guidance
Market intelligence and advice
Efficiencies in reporting
A partner capable of delivering innovation and tangible outcomes to the city in terms of social values
The solution:
Despite being the incumbent supplier, we wanted to deliver innovation and ensure it was consistent throughout the life of the contract and flexible to the needs of the market.
We continued to provide Sheffield City Council with a hybrid managed service, offering the cost benefits of a master vendor model with the immediate access to a proven suppler base.
Categories such as admin, and clerical and IT continued to be delivered on a master vendor model due to our proven success in delivering locally,whileimmediate access to the supplier panel has been utilised for high-in-demand and short-in-supply categories such as qualified social care, legal and engineering.
Furthermore, we strengthened the route to market for Sheffield City Council by including modular services, such as services procurement, statement of works consultancy, and permanent offerings.
This was all underpinned by our flexible vendor management system (XMS),consultancy software and a specialist and local account management team. This included subject matter experts in social values, employee value proposition, and most recently equality, diversity, inclusion and belonging.
The results:
Since we went live with a new contract in April 2017, we have provided a one-stop shop for managers who are seeking both a traditional route to market and innovative routes to tackle the war for talent.
We have provided a consistent and familiar face for advice and guidance, and we pride ourselves on our open-door policy and desire to help, as evidenced by our hiring managers and key stakeholders. Their feedback includes these comments:
“You are always offering advice and going the extra mile to make sure we have all the info on roles from managers so we can really sell the roles to candidates.”
“It is easy to be collaborative when you are working with people like you. Your knowledge of Sheffield City Council and your dedication to help, as well as your humour, has helped me a lot.”
Through our Consultancy+ arm, we have delivered multiple project teams to tackle backlogs from Covid-19 and ensure the authority continues to deliver excellent services for residents. We have provided a quick and compliant route to market for very specialist projects through services procurement, from land supply consultants to investments, bat licenses to levelling up.
We also ensure we are providing the most cost-effective method, working with stakeholders to find improvements upon the chosen initial route. Most recently we have worked to supply in-demand skills within the revenues and benefits services via the traditional temporary route, to reduce the reliance on the external provider.
Our hybrid approach has proven very successful as we maintain the right balance of Reed Talent Solutions fill at 68%, with allowing plenty of opportunities and healthy competition across our supplier panel.
Due to our local delivery team, we can react quickly to unexpected peaks in demand as seen throughout the Covid pandemic and entering the war for talent, where we upped our delivery by 150%.
Our local branches and suppliers often provide feedback on how dedicated we are in ensuring they have the tools to promote the opportunities most effectively, such as: “I did just want to thank you both for your tremendous support and partnership in recruiting the agency team that we have to date working for us for this academic year.”
Being on the pulse of the community via our local presence and effective partnership with the council, we have been able to tailor our social value offering to community needs while promoting aspirations for young people and helping improve the employability of all residents is a consistent activity.
We were able to adjust our activities, such as delivering food parcels during Covid and running a virtual pet pageant to gain vital funds for a local hospital, to increasing our food bank donations, and helping support a summer camp so children had a hot meal in the summer holidays as the cost-of-living crisis hit.
Further feedback included:
“I wanted to send you a huge thank you for donating selection boxes to go into the activity packs. We have been delivering 1000 packs to our vulnerable children and families across the city and each pack has contained chocolate and sweets/selection boxes, Santa hats, arts and crafts, colouring books, Christmas film list, recipes for gingerbread, pastry cutters.”
“Thank you so much to the team for once again stepping up to the mark and helping to deliver the packs over the last couple of days”.
Furthermore, we are firm believers in “Better Never Stops,” so have provided changes to Management Information (MI) to help tackle overtime, and promote temp to permanent opportunities. We have enhanced XMS to additional and bespoke compliance attributes, and enhanced tracking facilities to create more meaningful MI.
Find out more about our flexible resource marketplace solution, or get in touch with one of our experts to talk through your needs.
