Christmas Postal Peak Supported Through Candidate Attraction Campaign
- staff supplied a day
- baseline workers between January and September
- months of recruitment activity supported
Company Background
Our client is one of the oldest postal organisations in the world, delivering letters and parcels for over 500 years. They operate in 43 countries worldwide, delivering over 1.8 billion parcels and 14 billion letters each year. In the UK, the company has over 37 mail centres and 11,200 collection points, backed by a 50,000 strong vehicle fleet and a workforce of more than 141,000.
Client
Contact
Sector
Staffing Type
Recruitment Challenge
Our client’s biggest staffing challenge was meeting the demands of their Christmas peak season. Due to the increased volume of letters and parcels requiring delivery over the short period, our client needed an increase in temporary staff to meet this demand.
The competitive nature of the employment market at the time required good pay rates, as well as a quick time to hire, to ensure that our client was getting the best talent available. Ensuring the right temporary workforce was hired was necessary, to avoid additional strain on the current workforce, reduce the likelihood of staff attrition, and to accommodate any staff unavailability.
Recruitment Solution
Our Blue Arrow Account Manager collaborated with the client’s team to establish a forecast of the staff levels needed to meet the uplift in postal and distribution demand. At this time, we mobilised local talent using a digital marketing campaign and candidate outreach to attract workers. This resulted in an 8-week programme of candidate attraction activity, aimed at finding the first intake of staff for mid-October.
Weekly reporting was provided to the client’s Flexible Recruitment team, identifying performance of the talent pipeline and highlighting potential areas of supply risk. A hybrid of real-time dashboard reporting and daily updates were used to give a timely view of new-starters, attendance, and attrition levels.
Recruitment Journey
Alongside our work, the client ran its own recruitment campaign. We supported this programme by supplying recruitment staff to attend over 400 open-day events throughout the UK. Due to the scope of the events taking place, our national footprint of Blue Arrow branches proved invaluable as they were ready to supplement local contingent staff as and when needed.
Our team of compliance and vetting specialists maintained high levels of governance around legal recruitment check standards for our client – ensuring that every temporary staff member supplied has the right to work.
The relationship has been built on trust in our contingent staffing capability. Wherever the client experiences acute staffing challenges, the flexibility and reliability of our service can always be depended upon.
Blue Arrow Account Manager
The Results
Through our nationwide work with our client, we were able to provide:
- A baseline supply of 120-150 workers at any time (between January and September)
- A peak of 650 staff a day (between October and December)
- Nation-wide recruitment events supported for 8-month duration
