HROTodayGlobal

Recruitment The Power of the Brand It all started with baby steps. In 2005, Zurich Financial Services signed a five-year recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) agreement for its offices in the United Kingdom. The main focus in the beginning of the relationship was process excellence and meeting service level agreements. With Alexander Mann Solutions' (AMS) help, Zurich reduced time to hire and cost per hire by 50 percent. "We've created a holistic approach in terms of how we manage resourcing across the whole organisation," says Mark Smith, client services director, AMS. The scope began to change as the engagement matured. Executive search was added to the bucket of services. AMS selected a dedicated team to focus on executive hires for Zurich in the U.K., Asia and the Middle East. Graduate recruitment and contractor management are now also part of the contract. "Before we [AMS] took over, only 20 percent of hiring was driven by the brand. The other 80 percent was through third party agencies. We've moved that model forward and 92 percent of hires is driven by the brand. That has had a massive impact in terms of cost per hire," explains Smith. The second phase of the partnership has been focussed on value add in a variety of areas. Quality of hire has become a central piece of the relationship. Finding the right talent for the position has driven investment in best practices around assessment and selection. Recruitment training is another initiative. Line managers make the final hiring decisions at Zurich and getting them schooled on the best approaches, what to look for in quality candidates, and aligning quality hires to business goals is a priority. Exit surveys—finding out why people are leaving the organisation—help Zurich to improve the recruitment process to avoid high turnover. Success and growth in the U.K. has encouraged Zurich to duplicate these efforts on a global stage. When April Samulewicz, global head of talent acquisition, joined the organization last year, she was surprised to see that the company lacked an internal brand. Zurich wanted to examine and build the internal brand in order to become the employee of choice for the insurance industry in the U.K. "We had a very strong corporate brand and we're continuing to invest and build that. But in the last year, we've gone on a journey to identify what is our employer brand and doing an internal campaign with our leadership team. We've been doing that in partnership with AMS," says Samulewicz. Zurich leveraged its RPO engagement for results far beyond typical SLAs. By Debbie Bolla With 60,000 employees in 178 locations, Zurich's recruitment was suffered from a decentralised process. Samulewicz was brought on board to centralise it and use the U.K. model as best practices to build upon brand expertise. This was made up of four tiers: employees' expectations, employer's promise, impact on workforce, and business performance. Company collateral was collected and an examination of the U.K. process was conducted to create the employer brand. "We keep talking about how we bring out the best in our people, but this was not the original tagline. We had come up with a lot of others that we thought would represent Zurich. But we were in the creative room with AMS and someone said, 'Let's bring out the best in this'—and hence the new tagline for Zurich," Samulewicz recalls. She says that the AMS team did an exceptional job drilling down to the emotion the tagline would create. A toolkit for employer brand, including an employee brand guide was created to help employees, managers, and recruiters understand how Zurich approaches the market and how it is communicated. Zurich is taking several company initiatives global: Online on-boarding has been streamlined on a global level. Lag time between offer time and joining Zurich can take up to six months so the company developed an interactive website that allows new employees to get updated on company developments. The employee referral program was improved with personalized awards and encourages the development of networking among employees and clients. Zurich's online portal of job opportunities is promoting internal mobility. The program has seen increased retention rates and significant cost savings in external recruitment. Employees report feeling a connection to the brand as a result of the transparent view of opportunities. Zurich has achieved several benefits from its RPO engagement with AMS, including financial (cost savings, scalability, and scope expansion); performance (access to specialists, strategic resources, and measurable analytics); and strategic (innovation, access to market insight, and global leadership). It's a giant leap from where the company started five years ago. SUMMER 2011 | www.hroglobal.com [21] On-boarding Referrals Internal mobility

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