Drax Power Limited, which owns the largest coal-fired power plant in the UK, has purchased Bond Talent – the online recruitment & talent management software solution – from stock market-listed Bond International Software. The solution will provide an online recruitment web portal, applicant tracking system and also talent pool functionality ahead of the proposed construction of Drax’s new biomass-fired power plants. The use of Bond Talent is also anticipated to reduce recruitment advertising spend by as much as 40%.
The Drax Group includes Drax Power Station, near Selby in North Yorkshire, which currently provides 7% of the UK’s electricity needs and employs around 750 people, and also Haven Power based in East Anglia – an electricity supply company serving the needs of business customers, that has grown from a few hundred customers to around 23,000 in the last two to three years. Bond Talent will be deployed across both of these divisions.
Richard Neville, Head of HR at Drax Power, explains, “We are intending to develop three biomass-fired power plants from 2011 onwards, each of which will employ a substantial number of contractors during the three and a half year construction phase and a direct operational workforce after that. In order to ensure that we are sufficiently resourced, we are planning to set up a talent pool through Bond Talent that will enable us to store details of suitable applicants who contact us in the meantime. The resulting self-sufficiency the talent pool will afford us will allow us to reduce our dependency on recruitment advertising, and thereby reduce our costs by as much as 40%.”
Neville continues, “In addition, Haven Power, which has enjoyed phenomenal growth over the last years, has a very high recruitment need– employing as many as five to ten new staff each week. We are currently managing this recruitment process through paper-based processes – CVs are received in hardcopy, photocopied and forwarded to the relevant line manager for review. As we receive lots of applications across both Haven Power and Drax Power, this is a time-consuming and particularly un-environmentally-friendly process. Through Bond Talent, we will be able to receive applications via a new Drax-branded, user-friendly web portal on our website, track and manage the application process electronically and then replicate the recruitment data from successful candidates into our HR system. This will significantly reduce both our target time per hire, which is currently 70 days from vacancy opening to job offer, and our overall costs.”
Bond Talent is a specialist application for the global recruitment and talent management markets which has been designed to greatly reduce hiring costs and to enhance the strategic capability of in-house resourcing teams. The system is user-friendly and flexible allowing for reduced paperwork and improved efficiency. This gives key recruitment staff more time to concentrate on development rather than administrative tasks.
Tim Richards, Managing Director of Bond UK, comments, “Richard previously worked at Yorkshire Water – one of our longest-standing Bond Talent customers – and as a result of seeing the power and functionality of Bond Talent there, has very quickly brought us into Drax Power to provide the same level of service and support. The cumbersome and expensive recruitment processes at Drax Power typify the situations for which Bond Talent was designed, so we are confident in our ability to help reduce costs and times per hire once again.”
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