Bournemouth council automates temp recruitment
David Woods, 21 January 2009
1
1 comment on this article.Bournemouth Borough Council is to adopt a technology platform to manage the recruitment of its temporary staff in the hope of reducing recruitment spend by 4% or £212,000.
The council is working with Comensura to implement the scheme from 1 April, which will automate key recruitment functions and rank recruitment agencies against criteria such as cost, responsiveness and calibre of candidates to create a competitive supplier list.
The procurement and HR teams at Bournemouth Borough Council made the decision following an internal survey of the organisation's recruitment processes. The new scheme will not only cut cost for the firm, but also management time.
Brett Holtom (pictured), strategic procurement manager at the council, said: "The system provides us with one point of contact and the online ordering and timesheet system will significantly reduce the administration time our managers previously had to invest in recruiting temporary agency staff themselves. It will also assist the council to pay suppliers' invoices promptly."
To post comments please log in here
All Comments
Sally Wilton - 17 February 2009
I run 3 recruitment agencies specialising in Health Care. Councils make a massive mistake when bringing in these organisations such as Comensura on the pretext of saving money. When there is a go between it causes huge confusion and poor service as we experience every day. Every phone call or message regarding members of staff have to go through these organisations and they are supremely slow and creaking. Nursing and Residential homes in particular need personal service from agencies and require the same members of staff to ensure continuity. The people that implement plans and systems such as the one Comensura operate have no experience of the requirements of clients. For example we visit homes to ascertain the type of staff needed and the risks involved. This is not allowed by these organisations, you are not even allowed to speak to them if an employee has missed the bus. Sooner or later an incident will occur which will bring into question the sense of these schemes. A very much simpler method would be just to standardise the rates and allow everyone to be judged on service alone. Cost effective and sensible. Get rid of the go betweens - they are just leeches.
Your Comment