Development program benefits recruitment consultancy

Citation

(2010), "Development program benefits recruitment consultancy", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 42 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2010.03742gab.006

Development program benefits recruitment consultancy

Article Type: Notes and news From: Industrial and Commercial Training, Volume 42, Issue 7

A talent-development program has improved staff retention and boosted revenues at UK recruitment consultancy STR Group.

The company, a specialist in recruiting for the engineering, health, information-technology, commercial and education sectors, expects to save about £400,000 over 12 months thanks to the training, which won a “medium employer” prize in the latest National Training Awards.

Richard Crawley, managing director, said: “The organization has experienced both financial growth and improvement in activity since the completion of the program, which was beyond anything the company expected.”

STR Group was founded in 2000 and employs more than 100 people. By 2008 it had 12 teams working across three divisions, but the teams were getting too large to be managed efficiently and staff were leaving.

The decision was taken to create a new “business critical” middle-management tier of six team leaders, each managing a team of six. A training program, the STR Leadership Academy, was launched in order to identify existing employees with management potential and equip them with the skills they needed to be a team leader.

The company’s training team designed a five-month course to meet the job specification of the new role. Six modules, each lasting one or two days, covered the role of the team leader, business strategy, management performance, nurturing talent, and motivating and delegating. Each was followed with project work and action plans that built on the new knowledge.

Every delegate had responsibility for managing at least one member of staff during the course. Everyone in the company with more than a year’s recruitment experience was eligible to apply for one of the 12 places on the course, delivered by an internal trainer with support from external training partners Landers Associates and senior management.

At the end of the training, eight people were identified for immediate promotion and two extra team-leader roles were created. Since then, all the promoted delegates have grown their teams and are showing an increased capacity for leadership. One, for example, worked with a team member who had previously been subject to disciplinary action for poor performance and managed him back to above-target performance. Meanwhile, those who were not immediately promoted were given extra support to help them to move up within the next six months.

The business has benefited from the training on a number of fronts. “It has given 12 employees the skills, knowledge and confidence to perform important roles that the company has created for them, which enables them to play a big part in the future of our organization,” said Richard Crawley. “The training has also improved staff retention and boosted business activity and turnover.”

He continued: “STR employees can see the real benefits that the training has given and many of our staff now have an increased hunger for advancement, with the knowledge that career progression is there for the taking with full management backing and investment. Nobody could have envisaged the effect this training would have on the business – we are all absolutely thrilled.”