Powering a reliable long-term MSP for UKPN.
UK Power Networks (UKPN) are a power distribution network provider working to transform the UK networks from a DNO to DSO across eight million homes in London, the South East and East of England. With increasing demands on the UK’s electrical supply, UKPN was seeking a partner that could help combat their challenges in providing quality talent, fast.
Their challenges
To continue delivering their market-leading services, UKPN were looking for a new solution provider. They needed quick access to high-performing contingent workers with the right skills and experience, across all disciplines, including engineering, clerical, professional and technology. We have outlined the key challenges they faced below:
1. STEM skill delivery
UKPN’s previous providers struggled to find the quality and volume of workers they required, particularly across technical skill areas, which resulted in a long supply chain of agencies used across their hiring communities as no single supplier could deliver.
2. Lacking visibility
UKPN lacked visibility over their entire contingent workforce across numerous suppliers in various budgets. This resulted in compliance risk from misclassified workers and inefficiencies in resource deployment, planning, rate management and payrolling.
3. Strict requirements
UKPN are a highly regulated business operating to strict requirements stipulated by Ofgem including cost control, continuity and customer experience. A need to demonstrate efficiencies across all procurement and operational activities was vital.
What we did
Following a competitive tender process, we were appointed as UKPN’s exclusive contingent recruitment partner in 2013. We were responsible for the recruitment of 300-600 temporary workers for UKPN’s 9 directorates each year across 52 UK sites and all skill sets, including power, safety critical, consulting, transportation and professional skills.
To retain UKPN’s hiring manager community’s preferred and trusted suppliers, we initially implemented a neutral vendor model to deliver supply chain governance, cost control and implement delivery processes which could guarantee delivery. Upon demonstrating the value of a well governed workforce solution, we increasingly leveraged the delivery capability of our in-house industry leading recruitment brands to evolve to a master vendor model with high levels of direct fulfillment. The master vendor model enabled UKPN to realise greater cost savings through high direct fulfilment and allowed us to dedicate an on-site team.
We addressed UKPN's key challenges by:
Implementing differentiated delivery models per directorate. We utilised our sister companies, STEM skill specialist Matchtech and professional staffing experts Barclay Meade, to fulfill the requirements. This allowed us to meet their bespoke needs, increase efficiencies and improve quality. By doing this, we overcame concerns amongst hiring managers that their specialist requirements could not be met by a single supplier and established credibility amongst hiring communities to deliver.
Ensuring UKPN had full visibility of their workforce by implementing a purpose-built workforce management technology to gain visibility over their entire workforce and how much they were spending while ensuring that all contractors were being paid on time and maintaining a compliant process. We also operated an on-site team of solution professionals at the UKPN headquarters who were in place to ensure continued presence for hiring managers, worker engagement and effective workforce planning.
Continually evolving our solution to identify ways of realising cost-savings. We provided worker rate benchmarking, migrated workers to guarantee compliance and cost control, analysed direct payroll workers and compared them to the market, delivered tenure management and workforce right-sizing to continually optimise value for money. These methods helped our solution to align with UKPN’s Vision to be ‘Sustainably Cost-Efficient'.
Implementing differentiated delivery models per directorate. We utilised our sister companies, STEM skill specialist Matchtech and professional staffing experts Barclay Meade, to fulfill the requirements. This allowed us to meet their bespoke needs, increase efficiencies and improve quality. By doing this, we overcame concerns amongst hiring managers that their specialist requirements could not be met by a single supplier and established credibility amongst hiring communities to deliver.
Ensuring UKPN had full visibility of their workforce by implementing a purpose-built workforce management technology to gain visibility over their entire workforce and how much they were spending while ensuring that all contractors were being paid on time and maintaining a compliant process. We also operated an on-site team of solution professionals at the UKPN headquarters who were in place to ensure continued presence for hiring managers, worker engagement and effective workforce planning.
Continually evolving our solution to identify ways of realising cost-savings. We provided worker rate benchmarking, migrated workers to guarantee compliance and cost control, analysed direct payroll workers and compared them to the market, delivered tenure management and workforce right-sizing to continually optimise value for money. These methods helped our solution to align with UKPN’s Vision to be ‘Sustainably Cost-Efficient'.
In 2018, we retained our contract through a highly competitive tender procedure and commenced ‘Phase 2’ of our solution, that comprised of:
- Improved, technology-enabled processes that increased efficiency and compliance, helping us to deliver £1.5m in cost savings across our partnership
- Intelligent reporting that fed through to a live dashboard, allowing for full transparency and visibility to UKPN's hiring managers
- Strategic agendas, helping them with meeting commitments on safety, diversity and value-for-money, winning new business and industry collaboration
- Identifying two cost saving initiatives every quarter. We committed a proportion of our total margin to stand at risk where we fail to deliver ongoing cost savings, equating to us underwriting our cost saving efforts to the value of approximately £50,000
- Enhanced online brand promotion. We created a bespoke microsite on our recruitment brands' websites and tailored candidate attraction and contractor engagement materials to enhance the worker experience
The results
In addition to providing 2,000 temporary workers to UKPN over eight years, across both phase 1 and phase 2 of our solution, we have included key achievements of our partnership:
98%
direct in-house delivery
£1.5m
cost savings across our partnership
9.5/10
average hiring manager satisfaction scores
interview-to-fill ratio
56%
better than targeted
40%
faster average time-to-fill than targeted
average CV-to-fill ratio
2x
better than targeted
Added value
Underpinning our MSP for UKPN was ongoing added value to support them in reaching their workforce and wider business goals, including:
- We strategically supported UKPN’s ‘FutureSmart’ transition into a Distribution System Operator (DSO), driving change for a cleaner, electric future, through our shared success goals and our specialism in engineering-technology skills convergence
- We supported UKPN with additional activities on a consultancy basis such as bidding activity their permanent talent acquisition, where we seconded one of our key MSP Talent Partners into UKPN to recruit directly for their permanent team on an ad hoc basis to support volume recruitment drives
- Our employer branding experts worked with UKPN to deliver tailored services to attract the best talent in the market. Our microsite was built to advertise UKPN’s open vacancies and ensure the content and design spoke to their target audience, raising UKPN’s profile as an employer of choice
Cost savings
Over the course of our partnership, we delivered spend-based cost savings totaling more than £1.5M to UKPN, including:
- Delivered c.£200k of cost savings per annum
- Seasonal furloughing of IT contractors: over £310k
- Pay rate reductions: We successfully coordinated a pay rate reduction of 5% for UKPN for workers identified as lower risk. This saved UKPN over £185k in one year alone
- Second tier migration: We delivered the migration of contractors from second tier agencies. Based on actual utilisation of contractors, we saved UKPN £23k in one quarter
Outstanding client satisfaction
Our delivery has achieved high levels of hiring manager satisfaction; our most recent survey rated delivery as 9.3/10 across all directorates.
Throughout our partnership, we have optimised direct delivery, increasing efficiencies and savings per directorate through over 80% direct fulfilment, whilst increasing trust in delivery, even in areas, like UKPNs, with challenging role requirements, demonstrated in the below testimonial:
“My feedback is very good for Matchtech. Trying to find good high quality designers can be challenging in the market. Matchtech deliver in both the number and high quality of candidates found and put forward. The level of support administering the candidates is also very good with quick turn around on questions I raised or issues that need resolving.”
Engineering Professional Head, UKPN Services
Get in touch
Reach out to one of our Talent Solutions Directors to discuss how we can support you.
