On PSR we are breaking the mould of traditional recruitment strategies to address the public sectors skills shortages

When an industry's demand for talent is much higher than the market can supply, employers face the inevitable, an upward spiral in day rates and salaries, and an increased reliance on costly consultancy providers. From a macro perspective in the public sector this adversely impacts budgets, project completion timelines, the quality of public services provided and ultimately reduces value for money for the taxpayers. None of this is a desirable long-term solution.

Whilst there is value in mobilising people around an industry to try and fill roles in the traditional recruitment sense you are not systematically changing things nor providing a longer-term, sustainable solution.

There was a recent article in the HR Director on current labour market challenges that really resonated with me.

“Those who resist the evolution of the workforce at this crucial juncture will quickly find themselves unable to compete.” 

I couldn’t agree more.

At Public Sector Resourcing (PSR), managed by AMS, we have been forced to think differently about talent acquisition. In conjunction with Crown Commercial Service (CCS) we have launched a new “Recruit, Train, Deploy” (RTD) service line to allow public sector departments access to market leading suppliers who can deliver bespoke training courses tailored to their individual company needs. For the candidate, they are actually paid to train before being placed on a *2-year assignment with the department, in the hope of receiving an offer of permanent employment at the end. From a diversity & inclusion and social mobility perspective, these newly trained candidate cohorts are always exceptionally diverse, utilising the supply chains reach into untapped talent pools. Being an award-winning DEI employer is a prerequisite of the highly accomplished RTD supply chain! This is a win-win for employers who are able to future talent plan for the mid to long term as well as supporting their wider DEI and Social Value agendas.

But this alone is not an all-encompassing solution, and at PSR we currently offer contingent, RTD and Statement of Work (SOW) routes to market for our customer base. In the short-term customers will still need to deliver projects and with RTD, there is a lead time to training new recruits. This is where, at PSR, we support and encourage our customers to foster a multi-lateral and dynamic approach to their workforce planning. By having access to multiple resource streams that complement each other, employers can lean on different routes to market with different levels of voracity throughout their project delivery cycles.

Recently a customer came to us with a problem statement, “We can’t recruit Commercial Managers”. This is something we get a lot, as commercial management is a challenging market where talent is in short supply and is highly sought after. On hearing this we conducted a market assessment for the client, before providing market insights that considered availability of skills, barriers, locations, and limitations. We were then able to design a trilateral solution to help give them access to the extended workforce they needed in all timeframes – short, medium, and long term. To address the immediate need, contingent recruitment campaigns were initiated to deliver experienced talent. This was complimented alongside a cohort of newly trained RTD workers on a 2-year assignment with the aim of joining their workforce permanently. The third prong saw us utilising our SOW supply chain to procure a training provider to upskill their existing workforce in the desired commercial skillsets. This proposal not only helped with supporting the short, mid and long-term hiring needs but it also worked to increase employee mobility across their existing workforce and to increase employee retention rates.

If you are a public sector employer with a track record of struggling to hire via traditional means, then I encourage you to talk to your PSR Account Manager about extending your workforce with a trilateral talent solution. This model is a more strategic approach to narrowing the talent gap and can be applied to almost any industry or role type, Commercial Managers, to Software Engineers to Air Traffic Controllers! What’s more, it is a collaborative, bespoke solution, designed and managed for you by one service provider where you have all bases covered.

*2-year assignments are the average assignment length for candidates placed via the RTD model. However, these can vary between from 12 month to 18 month+ contracts.

Contingent workforce: Potential lifeline for labour market challenges | theHRD (thehrdirector.com)