theproof:

a 37% saving on the  total hr budget while maintaining and improving the existing service offering 

The issues

The client, a major player in the Social Housing sector (G15) were facing spiralling cost increases on employee related areas including high employee turnover, uncontrollable recruitment costs, legal support, absence. Against a background of economic downturn and increasing external and internal pressure to reduce costs, the challenge was to reduce HR costs and improve operational delivery as quickly as was possible.

Decisions and actions taken

In his initial capacity as Consultant (and then Interim HR Director) Phil Longhorn in collaboration with the client, agreed a plan to carry out a comprehensive review looking at areas of risk, inefficiency and overspend.

Three key areas were addressed immediately:

1.       Recruitment and Retention

A simple to implement “tweak” to a process and up-skilling of HR staff resulted in a greatly reduced reliance on Recruitment Agencies and traditional advertising, resulting in eliminating 63% off the previous year's spend hiring new staff throuhout the business. Another tangible result was attracting higher quality employees.

2.       Compliance and Governance

As a result of several  acquisitions by the group there, were a number of different cultures in operation. The resulting conflicts in employee contracts and staff handbooks (poor harmonisation) resulted in a heavy reliance on external Legal support provided by various expensive Law firms, a review of policies and procedures resulted in a consistency which could be supported by fewer suppliers at a cost reduction in year one of 55%.

3.       Absence

There were doubts about the integrity of the existing data regarding absence,  inconsistent recording was masking the real figure and the cost to the organisation of absence was not monitored. The remedy was the introduction of processes which recorded the incidences and monitored the cost, this is an ongoing process and the savings to the business will be significant (although as to date not 100% quantifiable) and benchmarked against CIPD and market competitor’s statistics.

Client benefits and results

The HR function was able to deliver operational efficiencies, whilst reducing its overall budget by 37%. Crucially, as a result of the transfer of knowledge and skills to the organisation these savings and operational competence are sustainable.