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World Duty Free enhances recruitment quality and reduces costs with ResourceBank – 02/02/09

Published: 02/02/09

Source: ©The Moodie Report

By Melody Ng

UK. World Duty Free has seen significant improvements in terms of recruitment following its partnership with UK-based outsourcing company ResourceBank for the opening of London Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 last year.

World Duty Free Head of HR Operations Geoff Hall was then responsible for ensuring over 300 people were in place at Terminal 5’s World Duty Free outlet in time for the March 2008 launch. Given the time pressures involved, the high-profile operation presented a huge recruitment challenge.

“We did not have the capacity in-house to recruit at the volume or speed required for the Terminal 5 launch, so we decided to outsource all recruitment to a single local supplier,” said Hall. “We had recently attended an HR event, where we met Richard Pearson, Managing Director of ResourceBank, an outsourced recruitment provider, and began a dialogue with the team. ResourceBank were perfectly located with an office in Henley On Thames, which is close to Heathrow Airport.

“We were impressed with their retail experience gained from working with clients such as Magnet and Wyevale Garden Centres. In addition, a key criteria for World Duty Free is that we do business with like-minded companies – and the ResourceBank team seemed an ideal fit with us. We also valued the fact that ResourceBank decided to bring in a retail expert who had previously worked at House of Fraser, specifically to work on our business,” he added.

ResourceBank was awarded the recruitment contract in October 2007 and briefed to recruit 156 World Duty Free vacancies ranging from managers, customer service leaders and cleaners to specialists in cosmetic and perfumery, wines and spirits, sunglasses and cigars. All candidates needed to be in place by the end of January 2008 in order to complete staff induction and training programmes before Terminal 5 opened at the end of March 2008.

The ResourceBank offering

"By providing us with excellent candidates for junior retail positions, ResourceBank is also providing us with our managers for the future"

Geoff Hall
Head of HR Operations
World Duty Free

The ResourceBank team attended assessment days, worked airside and also set up and managed www.wdfcareers.co.uk – a website on which all World Duty Free vacancies are now advertised and through which candidates can apply online. In addition, ResourceBank devised a series of ‘killer questions’ in order to align the interviews to the job briefs.

Hall added: “World Duty Free is a highly attractive brand to work for and we never have a shortage of candidates applying for roles. The key thing is to select the right people and this is where ResourceBank’s experience is invaluable. As well as giving candidates a realistic overview about working for our brand, ResourceBank was mindful of the fact that retail standards had to be particularly high and that candidates needed to be commercially aware in order to maximise sales opportunities. We wanted candidates to be able to engage with customers, without doing a ‘hard sell.”

Results

Hall said: “ResourceBank’s rigorous interview process provided us with better calibre candidates than ever before. On average, we appointed one out of every two customer service assistants they put forward to us and one in 2.4 cleaners were successful at final interview stage. The World Duty Free retail operations managers, who conducted the final interviews, were particularly pleased that as a result of working with ResourceBank, they interviewed fewer candidates than ever before in order to make an offer. This saved them a considerable amount of time.”

Prior to appointing ResourceBank, 34% of candidates who were offered retail roles at World Duty Free did not accept the position. This figure has since been reduced to 18%.

“Through ResourceBank, the candidate journey has improved considerably,” said Hall. “All applications are quickly acknowledged, job offers are made within 48 hours of being authorised by the HR team and candidates deal with a single contact at ResourceBank. In fact, candidates see ResourceBank as part of the World Duty Free recruitment team and do not realise they are an external business.”

World Duty Free has gone on to extend its contract with ResourceBank to recruit all retail positions at Heathrow and Gatwick Airports.

The success of the partnership is underlined by the “complete transparency of systems” between ResourceBank and World Duty Free. ResourceBank has access to all World Duty Free vacancies and World Duty Free can go online at any time to track ResourceBank’s candidate progress or access their weekly, monthly and quarterly reports. The reporting system, according to Hall, is “far more efficient” than any recruitment reports World Duty Free had previously produced in-house.

"Since working with ResourceBank, World Duty Free has reduced retail recruitment costs by -25%. However, our partnership with ResourceBank offers far more than just value for money – they have really helped us to employ better quality candidates"

Geoff Hall
Head of HR Operations
World Duty Free

On average, ResourceBank, with its core team of two full-time and one part-time staff, screens approximately 400 candidates per week, of which 12% are successful in reaching World Duty Free Assessment Centre interview stage. To date, ResourceBank has made 469 offers of intent on behalf of World Duty Free, with 447 candidates accepting the positions.

Following on from its success in retail, ResourceBank has now been appointed to recruit 30 warehouse operatives for the World Duty Free warehouse and storage areas. The partnership between the two organisations has extended further by the additional recruitment of drivers, loader drivers and shift managers.

Hall concluded: “Since working with ResourceBank, World Duty Free has reduced retail recruitment costs by -25%. However, our partnership with ResourceBank offers far more than just value for money – they have really helped us to employ better quality candidates. Prior to ResourceBank, our retail staff retention rate was 28%, now it is just below 20% - a very good figure for a retail business.

“As a brand, World Duty Free invests heavily in people and talent. In fact, 60% of our retail sector managers have been promoted to management level from within the organisation – which is all the more reason why it is so important that we employ appropriate candidates for our entry level positions. By providing us with excellent candidates for junior retail positions, ResourceBank is also providing us with our managers for the future.”

For more information, visit www.resourcebank.co.uk.

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