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 C

Carefully read the following: 

As part of the continuous improvement and innovation review and implementation, Woodhouse Recruitment implemented a formal survey to assess each candidate’s satisfaction with the company’s services. The survey included 15 questions and is focused on the company’s services and desire to improve these. Of the 100 surveys that were sent out by post, only 12 were returned.

Customer survey findings are as follows:

Overall satisfaction with Woodhouse Recruitment:

7 totally satisfied

2 somewhat satisfied

0 dissatisfied

1 totally dissatisfied

No comments provided

Ease of doing business with Woodhouse Recruitment:

5 totally satisfied

4 somewhat satisfied

2 dissatisfied

1 totally dissatisfied

Comments from candidates:

Got the job I wanted, thanks so much

Consultants friendly

Hard to contact consultants

Didn’t keep us up to date with progress of applications

Customers who said they would recommend Woodhouse Recruitment to others:

5 very much so

4 most likely

2 no, I would not recommend

1 definitely not recommend

Comments from candidates:

Would definitely recommend

I would not recommend as I was not happy about the lack of information throughout the process

I would not recommend. I kept being sent for jobs that just were not right for me.

Complete the following activities:

Prepare an implementation review report

Review the case study information, and write a short (about one page) report that includes the following:

a. Read the article below and develop an analysis based on your review of this article as to why the survey sent out by Woodhouse Recruitment might have not been effective.

http://www.peoplepulse.com/resources/useful-articles/recruitment-process-feedback/

b. Discuss the successes from this type of continuous improvement initiative. Discuss what could Woodhouse Recruitment take from this experience into future efforts to improve performance.

c. Review and analyse the results of the 12 surveys received outlining the results of the customer survey, as well as potential reasons for the low return. Present the results of the survey in bar charts that include the percentages and provide an analysis of the overall customer satisfaction, ease of doing business and customer loyalty. You should also comment on the validity of the findings given the low return.

d. Make recommendations for future customer surveys, including the frequency