How Serco saved $4 million with LiveHire and SAP SuccessFactors
Company Background
Serco is a global leader in providing public services to governments, operating in over 20 countries, and employing a workforce of more than 50,000 people.
Challenge
Serco hires thousands of employees each year. They needed to evolve the talent acquisition process to create a sustainable approach to talent attraction, engagement and rapid deployment that enabled the organisation to respond to high-volume and specialist hiring needs.
The previous approach to recruitment at Serco was reactive, costly and process-heavy. It was dominated by manual steps and an overly complex tech stack. Agency fees were too high and internal processes relied heavily on manual, human effort, which led to errors and high candidate turnover as well as a poor candidate experience.
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Key results
$4 million in cost savings
18 min average SMS candidate response time
70,000 candidates in Talent Community, 9 months after go-live
Candidates from Talent Community convert at nearly 4x rate of job boards
Productivity nearly x2 better per specialist recruiter & nearly x3 per volume recruiter
Conversion of candidates from application to hire up on average 20%
Solution
In order to achieve a sustainable and proactive solution, Serco realised they needed a talent acquisition platform to underpin the transformation. They selected LiveHire based on its ability to automate processes and build talent pools of hire-ready candidates.
Talent Pools
After implementing LiveHire, Serco were able to build talent pipelines for key roles. They created talent pools with aligned skills and capabilities which can be rapidly deployed for surge hiring needs.
Serco focused on an omnichannel sourcing and engagement approach where the technology (through AI matching) surfaces talent that meets their needs. This strategy enables Serco to reduce its reliance and cost on recruitment agencies and labour hire firms.
"Since implementing LiveHire, our time-to-hire has reduced by 50%, productivity per specialist recruiter has doubled, and productivity per volume recruiter has tripled."
Kelly Van Nelson
Managing Director Operations, Serco Asia Pacific
Leveraging Employer Brand
Since the implementation of LiveHire Serco have been able to amplify their brand for their specialist hiring needs (in particular healthcare) through the establishment of a Talent Community-led approach to attract, nurture and engage talent that has been historically difficult to find.
Integration
The deep bi-directional integration between LiveHire and SAP SuccessFactors has created a seamless, end to end hiring experience that enables the TA team to deliver powerful reporting and analytics to the business. They are now able to provide reporting with more accuracy and insight on talent pipelines, hiring outcomes and talent availability.
"My team have been thrilled with the level of personal attention & support that they have received throughout implementation and LiveHire’s dedication and commitment across the business has been amazing"
Kelly Van Nelson
Managing Director Operations, Serco Asia Pacific
Results
Serco used to spend millions of dollars on job advertising and agencies. Since launching LiveHire in July 2022, the organisation has achieved external recruitment cost reductions of approximately $4 million in less than 12 months across a blend of agency and advertising category spend.
Serco have established a dedicated team (with dedicated systems) to create efficient and best in class high volume and specialist recruitment processes. Utilising a best-in class platform enables Serco’s team to achieve greater levels of efficiency within the recruitment process.
They are now able to hire faster; engage with talent quickly and in a more human way via 2-way SMS messaging; reduce agency and labour hire costs; build their employer brand and generate talent insights within their Talent Community to support ongoing growth and surge needs.
Outside of the Operations team, HR has a focus on internal mobility and LiveHire has given them enhanced visibility into their workforce, including the ability to quickly filter between internal staff and external applicants.
"We brought in LiveHire for speed and much more nimble hiring across a market that we needed to reach more quickly."
Kelly Van Nelson
Managing Director Operations, Serco Asia Pacific
Improved visibility
In combination with LiveHire, Serco has leveraged SAP SuccessFactors to manage enormous workforce complexity in their organisation. They deal with many different unions, awards and role types across multiple states and territories. SAP enables them to have really accurate visibility of that whole workforce and ensure their people are paid correctly and on time, which is vital.
Serco leverages SAP for its enterprise capabilities, combined with innovative solutions like LiveHire and a variety of point solutions to build an efficient tech stack that works for them.
Summary
LiveHire and SAP have a seamless integration that enabled Serco to deliver a project that was on time and on budget, with phenomenal support from the implementation team at LiveHire. After just 12 months the results are impressive.
Serco has achieved a best-in-class talent acquisition management system which acts as a fully integrated CRM & ATS in combination with SAP SuccessFactors. The solution enables Serco to run a separate work stream in parallel to the core recruitment process. The solution delivers a seamless user experience, enriched candidate data and availability, The deeply integrated tools within the solution dramatically accelerate their ability to deliver outcomes to the business.
