Carefully read the following: 

Woodhouse Recruitment is based in central Melbourne and is a recruitment agency offering recruitment services, including sourcing, screening, and selecting candidates to meet clients’ requirements. The company was established in 2010 by Simon and Petra James, a husband-and-wife team who are the Directors of the company. The company also employs a receptionist, five recruitment consultants and an Administration Manager. The agency plans to recruit a further 2 new consultants to start with the company in early 2018.

The company specialises in the recruitment area of Administration and Office Support, Accounting, IT and Sales and Marketing for both permanent and temporary staff. The company sees its point of difference as being an owner operated, boutique recruitment agency. The company currently has approximately 30 clients who regularly use their services.

At a recent management team meeting, the management team (the Directors, Administration Manager, and the Senior Recruitment Consultant), discussed the need to implement systems and processes for continuous improvement and innovation into the company. This is in part based on the need to stand out from the competitors in an industry where there are many recruitment agencies. Several issues were discussed at the management meeting, which the management team feel need further exploration as part of introducing continuous improvement systems and innovations.

Services Standards

The company states on its web site that it has the following delivery service standards:

Service Promise: we are clear in what we offer and the benefits it brings to you

Service Delivery: we offer consistent and reliable service to you

Customer Relationships: we are open and friendly with all of our customers

Compliance: we ensure we adhere to all ethical and legal requirement

However, service standards have not been clearly defined and there are no performance indicators in place to measure performance.

Key performance indicators

No formal performance indicators in place to measure key service standards including how quickly candidates are recruited to fill jobs or how many of the candidates pass the trial period effectively.

Social Media

There is no social media strategy in place. Currently the company is not using social media to market positions or to source candidates but recognizes this is an area for development. Currently most candidates are usually found through the existing database (60%) or through advertising on job search web sites.

Staff professional development

While all recruitment consultants are expected to have minimum qualifications and experience, there is no process in place to ensure that recruitment consultants continue to participate in professional development activities to keep their skills up to date. There is also no performance appraisal system in place.

Sustainability 

The business currently does not have any formal sustainability initiatives in place and is conscious of moving towards a green office environment both to be an environmentally friendly business, as well as to reduce costs.

Key business performance statistics:

Annual sales revenue for financial year 20 14 - 2015 is $1,350,000, an increase of 10% from the previous year.

Increase in profits for this financial year compared to the last one is 9%

16% of placements are in the IT area, 18% in accounting, 20$ in sales and marketing and the remainder in administration and office support.

60% of revenue is from repeat client business.

Fill rate is 40% (where fill rate is the number of job orders filled by the number of job orders received multiplied by 100).

Average time to fill contracts for 2014 were as follows:

• Temporary contracts are 8 days
• Contract work is 20 days
• Permanent search 23 days
• Executive search 33 days

Key performance indicators currently used to measure business performance focus on financial indicators, including net operating profit and sales revenue. The company also tracks its fill rate and is seeking to improve this to the industry average of 47% over the next year.

Part A 

Complete the following activities: 

Develop a continuous improvement and innovation report

Review the scenario information and based on your review, select two topics or areas that you can research and review, develop continuous improvement and options and then plan to implement innovative processes for. One of these topics you select must be in relation to improving a sustainability program.

When you have identified the two topics or areas, you will then be required to prepare a report to your manager (your assessor). Your report should be written in clear and concise English and contain relevant headings to address the required information. Your report should be around 3 pages long.

Your report must address the following for both topics:

Your topics or areas for improvement that you will plan a continuous improvement and innovative processes for, one being a sustainability program

Identify and discuss a range of strategies that you can implement to monitor and evaluate the current performance and sustainability of your topics/areas for improvement. Identify at least two strategies for each area selected.

Analyse and provide a detailed account of the current supply chain and the (operational, product or service) systems the business is using to deliver their service. Explain what is working well and what could be improved.

Identify how the topics/areas for improvement performance could be measured, including an outline of the assessment tools or techniques that could be used. Evaluate the effectiveness of each tool/technique.

Identify at least two specialists that could help Woodhouse Recruitment. For example, this may be to identify technology and electronic commerce opportunities or to implement your ideas about continuous improvement and innovation. Include their contact details, the services they offer and a rationale as to why it may be beneficial for the company to use their services.

Conduct research and analyse and report on trends and opportunities relevant to Woodhouse Recruitment in relation to your topics/areas for improvement. Use the resources provided by the assessor as listed under ‘Required’, as well as any other relevant resources.

Compare Woodhouse Recruitment's business performance statistics to industry benchmarks and provide an assessment of why or why not the company may not have met their targets.

Discuss three examples of other innovative business ideas that Woodhouse Recruitment could adopt and implement.