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.

Develop action plan and report

You are required to develop action plans for implementing the continuous improvement and innovation initiatives agreed to in Part A.  

You are also required to develop a plan for each agreed initiative.

Your plans should be developed using a project management tool such as a GANTT chart that sets out all the actions required to implement the initiatives including timing, responsibilities, required resources, communication, and key performance indicators for assessing the introduction of the initiative.

In a separate document to accompany the action plan, you are required to develop a short report that includes:

• Discuss the importance of continuous improvement and sustainability as an essential element of business and competition.

Include a risk assessment for each initiative, identifying the possible risks and how they can be managed. Identify two risks for each initiative and at least two risk management strategies for each.

Document a cost-benefit analysis for each initiative making assumptions in your analysis including assumed cost and benefits.

Document the impact of the change and the consequences for staff for each initiative

Document a brief contingency plan in the event of failure of the initiative