For any outsourcing arrangement to work, it is crucial to have buy-in from senior leaders in your organisation.
Consider where the budget is coming from – if it is from the business division that is going to derive the benefit from the relationship, does that mean the rest of the organisation cannot reap the rewards? If you are able to direct your strategic HR budget towards RPO, this could benefit the whole organisation rather than just one element.
Some of the documented advantages of RPO include:
- Removal of inefficient, unnecessary or non-standardised processes.
- Increased economies of scale.
- Switches fixed costs to variable costs.
- Improves technology solutions and leverages common data sources – your provider may have access to a wider talent pool or metrics on competitor recruitment programmes.
- Removes reliance on costly resources being used for basic processes, such as simple background checks.
- Improves innovation through breadth of knowledge of the market.
- Enables a core HR team to focus on strategy (as per the Ulrich model of HR) or cherry pick elements of recruitment they want to retain full control over, for example executive-level hires.
- Manages your preferred supplier list of recruitment agencies.
- Helps HR regain control if the organisation is in a rapid-growth mode or undergoing a major change. It also enables the organisation to scale up staffing levels quickly.
