The challenge:
As part of EE’s continuous efforts to improve their service for customers, they want to work towards ensuring the demographic of their staff on the front-line mirrors their customer base – particularly when it comes to vulnerable customers and driving more empathetic conversations.
EE required help in attracting those candidates who were changing career or returning to work after a break as they recognised this as a cohort their hiring strategy was struggling to reach.
The solution:
Reed Talent Solutions’ recruit, train, deploy service includes a bespoke model designed to support contact centres with innovative ways to attract and onboard new and underrepresented talent through a reskilling solution.
We worked with EE to devise a solution to seek out and engage people who are changing career or returning to work, while simultaneously creating social value within communities by investing in skills.
Our dedicated team of contact centre hiring experts provided insights to EE on the candidate wants and needs of different demographics so they could create new part-time shifts aimed at attracting different cohorts of workers.
EE already had an excellent benefits package in place, including a flexi-time scheme, which meant we were able to develop a compelling attraction strategy and to reach out to candidates who weren’t job seekers on standard recruitment channels.
Using EE’s CV-less process we were able to ensure all bias was removed from every single stage, which was critical to the success of the project.
Following an in-depth screening and engagement process carried out by our team, successful candidates were invited to attend an experience day, which we designed alongside the client and facilitated at EE’s Cardiff contact centre. This provided people with an opportunity to meet the team and see the business in action, as well as ask any questions about the role and the organisation and by doing so, removing any perceived blockers for potential talent.
The following day, candidates attended a full day customer experience training course, delivered by our training partner the UK National Contact Centre Academy, part of the Call Centre Management Association (CCMA). Candidates who attended both of these sessions were guaranteed an interview with EE.
The results:
We experienced a 100% attendance rate at interview which is 50% above BAU hiring and hit an 82% interview to offer rate, which led to us overachieving on target offers by 180%. EE also benefited from a retention rate for onboarded candidates of 94% - significantly higher than industry average.
Reed Talent Solutions’ Solutions Director, Louise Reed, said the project has been a tremendous success.
She said: “We reached candidates who, through our feedback surveys, said they would never have applied directly due to a lack of confidence, lack of skills or their perception of working in a contact centre.
“We onboarded people from a huge range of backgrounds, including a former police officer, accountant, chef, professional athlete, small business owner and even a grandmother.
“EE have seen the benefits of hiring for skills rather than experience, allowing them to drive deeper and more empathetic conversations with their customer base, while driving up retention.”
Head of Volume Talent Acquisition at BT Group, Matthew Howe, said: “We were exploring ways to engage with talented people looking to return to the workplace following a career break or considering a change of industry.
“Knowing an element of reskilling training would be required we partnered with Reed Talent Solutions, who were launching their innovative new approach in partnership with the CCMA.
“With 100% interview attendance, we were able to onboard almost double the candidates we originally planned to hire for this project.
“Our experience throughout the attraction, training and selection process has been brilliant. The project delivered a significant change in our diversity of hires with the average age of those hired more than 20 years above our standard.
“Based on the success we’ve seen in the initial project, we are now expanding the model out into other business areas with Reed Talent Solutions.”
Find out more about our recruit, train, deploy solution, or get in touch with one of our experts to talk through your needs.
