As 2023 approaches, the Ukraine war, energy costs and turbulence in the government have combined to create a wave of uncertainty across the UK Economy. The CBI’s business confidence index is at its lowest since 2020 and many organisations are re-evaluating their plans. For HR Directors, this creates a real dilemma. Many businesses were understaffed following the Covid crash of 2020 and have been in full expansion and recruitment mode since.
ONS data still shows a high level of advertised vacancies (1.22 million – in the quarter August – October) and the British Chamber of Commerce reported that 76% of UK businesses had recruitment challenges during the autumn.
Do businesses continue to invest in their recruitment resources, or do they cut back?
It is these times of uncertainty that having your recruitment managed by a flexible RPO partner gives you a distinct advantage.
Benefits of RPO in economic uncertainty
There are clear advantages to having a partner mange the uncertainty for you:
- No fixed internal overhead or systems cost
- Rapid scale up and scale down
- Retain expertise and systems
- Flexible cost
- Protects your employer brand
- Integrates into your process
Nothing demonstrates the benefits of having an RPO better than our case study of how World Duty Free were able to scale back up in the first quarter of 2022. Having ResourceBank as their retained RPO partner meant that firstly there were no high retained costs during the lockdown period of Covid, and secondly that high volume recruitment was scaled up immediately when needed at the end of covid.
This year has seen ResourceBank appointed as a flexible partner to many businesses including Imerys, Daikin, DHL and SSP. All businesses see the benefit of having a flexible resourcing partner in times of uncertainty.
Guide to RPO
To assist companies to evaluate whether to use on RPO, we have produced a free guide which includes:
- Fundamentals of RPO
- Five common RPO implementations
- Six key benefits
- How much does RPO cost
- How to select an RPO provider
