Six key benefits of RPO explained

If you’re a CEO or Procurement Director one of your major considerations day to-day will naturally be the cost of your temporary agency labour.

This article explains the streamlining, invoicing, scalability, brand management and financial benefits of RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) to your company. In particular, how it can make a huge difference to your costs by improving efficiency to create on-going savings that are both reliable and measurable – and help you maximise your revenues and profits.

So, what difference does using RPO make compared to working directly with recruitment agencies?

Well, firstly RPO takes ownership of managing the whole process – and takes responsibility for the results. RPO providers don’t just fill vacancies; they improve your entire recruiting process by planning, monitoring and implementing a system that handles all of your temporary agency labour needs.

Another difference is that RPO is based on a close partnership between the RPO provider and you.

This means they get an in-depth understanding of how you work, what you need and the best way to provide it. Their goal is the same as yours – to find you a better way of doing things and ultimately help you to refine your existing recruiting outsourcing process.

One of the most common problems with recruiting temporary agency labour is how uncoordinated your agencies can be. Inconsistencies in pay structure leads to inefficiencies that cause higher costs. RPO providers can change all this. They examine your recruitment process to stamp out the excessive cost, and inefficient practices and create a plan that offers the highest service levels and increased efficiency.

1: Getting your invoicing in check

One key area RPO can help cut costs and maximise profit is through single invoicing. How much does each individual invoice cost you? The Chartered Institute for procurement and supply suggest this figure is around £50. Whatever the figure for your organisation, you can make serious savings by utilising RPO’s ability to turn hundreds of invoices into one. It’s a simple yet highly effective way to make significant savings. Watch video.

2: Visibility & control

Many large organisations find it difficult to accurately track the costs of their temporary workforce, invariably supplied by a large number of recruitment agencies spread nationwide. RPO helps businesses solve this problem by empowering them to track, authorise, approve and receive invoices through one centralised software system. When used correctly, RPO gives you an accurate appraisal of your workforce expenditure with real time management information and reporting across your entire business. Watch video.

3: Supplier management

If you’re a company with a skilled temporary workforce that covers a large geographical area, RPO is a good fit for you. Implementing RPO enables scalability and flexibility whatever your fluctuating recruitment demands, with no compromise in speed, quality or brand. By handing over responsibility for selecting and managing agencies, you remove the headache and enable RPO providers to fully optimise your recruitment processes. The best RPO providers are vendor neutral and propose a panel of agencies based on a review of your existing agencies, or, if there is a lack of supply, will suggest new ones. All agencies within the supply chain are audited continuously by your RPO provider to ensure they are meeting industry minimum benchmark quality standards. This brings consistency of supply, a higher quality workforce, financial stability and optimised pricing. Watch video.

4: Legal compliance

A major benefit to your business of moving to an RPO provider is ensuring compliance to working standards and guaranteeing all regulatory requirements are up to date. RPO companies store online information covering rights to work in the UK, DBS checks, qualifications, health and safety training and details of Agency Worker Regulations. Good RPO firms will carry out bi-annual audits of all

agency worker records. This not only means you avoid potentially costly malpractice fines, but also reduces the concern about future legislation or compatibility with your Corporate Social Responsibility policies. Watch video.

5: Brand Management

When a temporary worker works at your organisation, it has a direct impact on your brand. Branding has become vital to a company’s reputation as an employer. It tells today’s social-media-savvy workforce what it’s like to work for you, and plays an essential part in attracting, developing, and keeping hold of the best talent. RPO is a really effective way to improve the candidate experience

and build your brand, as RPO companies manage recruiters effectively to work as an extension of your company to give candidates a smoother, more positive experience. This can play a big part in ensuring future success for your bottom line. Watch video.

6: The ROI of RPO

Once you’ve completed your initial analysis and review of your current temporary labour recruitment processes with your RPO provider, you can then start measuring the results to track your returns. RPO produces data using customised software platforms, that enable you to measure the impacts on your bottom line, weighing the benefits of investment versus cost. To calculate whether RPO has been effective in streamlining your recruitment process, you can compare cost areas, such as number of effective candidate sources, time-to-hire, pay rates, tenure and invoice processing time. And because data and results can be tracked continually via customised RPO software, you can always measure if you’re still getting value for money or cost savings. If you engage with a good RPO provider you should expect to see direct cost savings in the region of 6-12%. Watch video.

With RPO you can not only ensure talented, trained staff and a temporary workforce that make your business more efficient and streamlined, you can cut your costs and revolutionise your bottom line. And the best part of all? Once you have RPO in place the savings start to multiply year on year.

Datum RPO have created a downloadable guide called 'How to harness RPO to revolutionise your bottom line' click on the link below to access yours.