Time for Small to Medium Businesses To Explore The Benefits Of Recruitment Process Outsourcing.
The
March edition of PROFIT magazine contained an “Essential Guide For
Canadian Entrepreneurs” – a supplement detailing the five key trends
most likely to shape Canadian business in 2007. These trends were
identified as being Succession Planning, the Canadian Labour Shortage,
Cost Control, Outsourcing, and Web 2.0 (or the new digital
marketplace). The guide determined that “at least three to four of
these issues will impact almost every business in the country this
year”.
The purpose of this article is to
consider how the fourth key trend, outsourcing – and more specifically
Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) – can positively impact the small
to medium-sized businesses and simultaneously contribute to the issues
of the Labour Shortage and Cost Control.
Let us start at the beginning by asking the question, what exactly is
outsourcing? There are many definitions, but it basically boils down to
the contracting out of some or all of a company’s non-core
(non-revenue-producing) activities to external suppliers specializing
in the management of those processes. Many companies are finding that
transactional and administrative functions do not fall within their
“core competencies”, and do not represent a great source of added value.
Business
Process Outsourcing (BPO) includes outsourcing related to IT,
accounting, finance, HR, benefits and payroll. Recruitment Process
Outsourcing (RPO) is therefore the outsourcing of part or all of the
recruitment function. Outsourcing is no longer the domain of big
companies, and the opportunity for small to medium-sized enterprises to
reap the benefits of Recruitment Process Outsourcing has never been
greater.
Donna Messer, writing in Enterprise
Magazine (January 2007) describes how she often finds inspiration and
ideas for business development when she considers a single word – an
acronym – to help describe and remember “words of wisdom”. I would like
to do the same, in sharing the advantages of outsourcing, for which my
acronym is “Cream”. In this case “Cream” stands for:-
Concentration
Release
Expectation
Attitude
Money
Concentration
– The benefit of outsourcing non-core activities so that your business
can concentrate or focus on the things it does best. The elimination of
routine, time-consuming administrative or transactional “distractions”
in order to focus your energy on what really matters remains one of the
biggest advantages of outsourcing.
Release –
The “release” or “freeing” of your employees away from the
above-mentioned administrative or transactional “distractions”
generates the ability to either reduce workload and hence stress in the
workplace, or allows for improved employee performance as they develop
their skills and abilities in the core competencies.
Expectation
– Any customer / supplier relationship is based upon an expected and
documented “expectation” of deliverables ranging from quality, speed,
price, and benefits. Whether through Service Level Agreements, Business
Process Outsourcing Contracts and Agreements, or any other
legally-binding document, the customer is paying for a service and
therefore can hold the service provider accountable for performance in
a way that is not true internally.
Attitude
– Small businesses understand that employees have to be flexible and
take on a portfolio of responsibilities to ensure survival and growth.
But what if that “flexibility” translates into bad attitude and
performance, when the small business’s lack of expertise in a
particular function or non-core activity leads to morale issues with
employees? By outsourcing, the potential for such difficulties is
reduced or eliminated.
Money–
most people’s number one reason for outsourcing, but by no means the
only reason if outsourcing is done effectively. Most businesses
recognize the potential cost savings which can be realized by
outsourcing to a “specialist” vendor or service provider that
undertakes a particular administrative or transactional function more
efficiently than might be done in-house.
Recruitment Process
Outsourcing not only delivers the benefits summarized by CREAM, it also
offers the progressive small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) a
solution to the possible labour shortages predicted by the Canadian
Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) in the research paper
“Long-term vacancies grow for Canada’s entrepreneurs” (March 2007).
Furthermore, if introduced in an innovative way, Recruitment Process
Outsourcing can deliver significant cost savings and cash flow benefits
for the SME. The key is to innovate.
ROSS
(Recruitment Outsourcing Solutions) aims to do exactly that. By
offering flexible and scaleable, turnkey or tailored solutions, a price
model that avoids the hefty bills associated with contingency
recruiting, state-of-the-art interviewing techniques, plus a
sophisticated web-based Resource Management System and a
pre-outsourcing planning and training program, ROSS allows the SME to
address three of the key business trends in 2007.
So,
if you are a small to medium-sized business, with hiring needs of at
least six new employees and/or contractors over the next 12 months,
talk to ROSS now. ROSS delivers the benefits of CREAM, ensures
alignment of client and service provider goals, and seeks to add value
every day. In short ROSS offers the “crème de la crème” RPO solution
for the small to medium-sized enterprise. There’s never been a better
time.
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