Agenda item

[Report of the Director for Customers, Transformation and Resources. To be introduced by the Cabinet Member for Employment, Skills and Corporate Services]

The report  will seek agreement to award contract for the Recruitment Agency Supply Chain, as part of the insourcing of the recruitment hub. Relationships with agency suppliers will be required to replace the current arrangements.

The Cabinet Member for Employment, Skills and Corporate Services introduced the report which sought Cabinet approval under Contract Standing Order (CSO) 10.02.1 b) for a deed of variation to include the management of a permanent recruitment supply chain in the new contract for the supply of Agency Staff.

The Cabinet Member outlined that this was the first step to ensuring the Council were independent of external providers for staff and outlined how Matrix would assist with the sourcing of permanent staff on a reducing basis over the next 4 years. This would be monitored carefully so capacity for permanent staff grew in the organisation and dependency lessened on agency staff.

The objective was for the local authority to be a good local employer and for recruiting managers to have a good understanding of how to become a strong recruiting authority and have confidence in the staff that they themselves have selected.

In response to questions from Cllr Palmer the following information was provided:

-       The Council were anticipating savings from the new contract and Cabinet Member advised that £800k of savings had already been achieved from changing the temporary recruitment contract from Hays to Matrix. The sourcing of permanent recruitment had also been realised and £140k savings achieved and an overall total of £940k achieved. This would be accounted for partly in the current financial year and the in the next financial year due to the timing of the contracts.

-       The cost of support for the contract for 4 years would depend on usage and if the support was not required, the Council would not have to pay any money.

-       With regards to the transfer of staff to the new in -house team, the Council had recently received information on the staff that were transferring, and the Council were negotiating with Hays on this. The Council were expecting to fill half the required establishment of staff from the TUPE process.

-       The Council were in the process of advertising the outstanding roles. These would be firstly advertised internally, then externally and through agency staff if needed. There would not be the fully experienced team in place from year one hence the need to have a higher contract value in year 1.

RESOLVED

To approve, in accordance with Contract Standing Order 10.02.1 b), the deed of variation for the provision of the management of a permanent recruitment supply chain in the new contract for the supply of Agency Staff at a contract value of £1,495,090 over four years, from 24^th July 2021 to 23^rd July 2025.

Reasons for decision

The reason for the decision is that whilst the Council’s new in-house permanent recruitment service goes live in July 2021, this is a new service area for the Council. The new service will be required to fill an estimated 500 permanent positions per year (hence the estimated contract value of £1,495,090) and will therefore require an agency supply chain to support during mobilisation (2021/22) and then on an on-going basis for specialist, senior/executive and hard to fill roles to ensure all permanent vacancies are filled.

Best value for the Council will be achieved through the procurement and management of a permanent agency supply chain via the Matrix Neutral Vendor agency worker MSTAR 3 London Councils contract. This is a compliant procurement route for the Council. The MSTAR3 framework includes the provision of permanent recruitment and was included in a robust competition led by ESPO and LB Havering processes on behalf of several London Councils. This creates efficiencies and cost savings for the Council. In addition, the supplier will bring added value to the Council through an effective technology platform for recruiting permanent staff which will deliver improved processes and management information for monitoring cost.

Should the Council not implement a robust permanent supply chain strategy, the risk is permanent posts will remain unfilled and expensive agency workers / interims will be brought into the Council to cover permanent posts which will create additional and unnecessary cost to the Council.

As the inhouse permanent service evolves, the plan will be to very closely manage and reduce the use of agencies for permanent hiring. Over the four years of the contract the Council anticipates the following scale which is reflected in the contract value stated in this paper and based on the Matrix MSTAR3 contracted fees.

Contract value over 4 years:

The current Hays contract, which is expiring, stipulates three types of fees can be applied depending on the source of the successful applicant as follows:

Internal only process fee: When an existing member of staff moves to a different post within the Council.

Sourcing fee: When directly filling a permanent position from their own network.

Agency supply chain fee: When the incumbent engages a specialist agency to fill a permanent position.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) placement management fee: The incumbent fee charged for managing the agency supply chain.

To estimate the contract value over 4 years the Council has reviewed the incumbent sourcing channels and resulting invoice value and applied a % year-on-year reduction for the duration of the contract.

The resulting predicted contract value with the reductions applied (as per 4.5) is as follows and demonstrates the maximum amounts of predicted spend which relates directly to the increase in the Council’s own in-house permanent recruitment capability (as stated in 4.4). The estimated costs below are maximum expected values. Every effort will be made by thein-sourced recruitment team to minimise the use of agencies to source candidates for permanent vacancies within the council.

            The spend comparison data can be seen in figure 1 below:

Figure 1

Using the above calculations, the total spend over the four-year contract for both Agency Supply & Executive Search is predicted at £1,495,090 or £922,006 for Agency Supply and £573,084 for Executive Search compared to the benchmark data spend for one year of £1,648,562.

Alternative options considered.

Extend the existing contract with the existing incumbent.

The existing contract could be extended for a further year. However, this course of action would not allow the Council to realise the savings in the outline business case.