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How do you work with a Managed Service Provider?

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Managed Service Providers (MSPs) offer a cost-effective way of managing your contingent recruitment. But with recruitment MSPs bringing substantial expertise, streamlined operations and new technology to your business, how can you truly maximise the value of this strategic partner? 

Why partner with an MSP?

For many businesses, managing your contingent workforce can be a tricky task. From continuously advertising roles and onboarding candidates to developing the right employer value proposition to attract the right hires, businesses that are already short on time and resources can be stretched even further to get this important part of the business right.

However, a recruitment MSP can help businesses manage their contingent workforce far more efficiently. They are specialists in contingent labour recruitment and management and use their knowledge of talent attraction, hiring, and workforce management to help firms solve their part-time, temporary, and freelance labour needs.

What are the advantages of partnering with an MSP?

Efficiency:

With an MSP managing and recruiting your contingent workforce, your HR and procurement teams can focus their efforts on other tasks.

Expertise:

As experts in temporary staff management, an MSP brings significant insight to businesses. This includes salary benchmarks, emerging labour and talent trends and new technology that can streamline hiring, vetting and compliance management and offer detailed performance monitoring and visibility over your temporary workforce demand, utilisation, and spending.

Cost savings:

Partnering with an MSP can lead to significant savings. They can negotiate better rates with staffing agencies through their preferred suppliers, offer bulk advertising savings, automate, or streamline processes through superior technology and reduce administrative overheads.

Compliance:

Human error can lead your business to become non-compliant accidentally. But with an MSP, you can always be confident that your business reputation is in safe hands and will stay compliant with all labour laws.

Faster time-to-hire:

Through their knowledge of recruitment best practices and often well-established candidate community reach, MSPs can help businesses fill vacancies faster by directly filling staffing gaps.

Flexibility:

Businesses can hand over as much or as little of their recruitment processes as suits them, meaning an MSP can operate as an extension of your HR team.

How do you work with an MSP?

An MSP can be a transformative solution for businesses looking to streamline their contingent workforce recruitment and management. But to truly get the most value out of working with an MSP, it is a good idea to make sure you follow the tips below.

1. Define your recruitment needs

Every business’s needs are different, so outlining the specific details of the roles that you need to fill and the ideal candidates for them will help your MSP find quality candidates quickly.

2. Establish clear communication channels

Open and consistent communication is key to recruitment. Hold regular check-ins with your MSP to work through any challenges and stay up to date.

3. Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Establishing some KPIs will help you evaluate the effectiveness of your MSP. Metrics like time-to-hire, cost-per-hire and quality-per-hire can help you determine whether you are getting the desired results.

4. Provide feedback

Feedback is crucial and can help an MSP tailor their processes to meet your needs. Let them know if there are areas to improve and where they are doing well.

5. Make the most of their expertise

One of the biggest value-adds of an MSP is cutting-edge knowledge of recruitment practices and trends. Make sure to leverage their expertise to develop your understanding of hiring best practices, talent attraction strategies and developing market trends. This can help shape Employee Value Propositions and EDI strategies and even inform strategic workforce planning goals.

6. Regularly review the relationship

Regularly reviewing how the relationship with your MSP is evolving is key to maintaining an effective and constructive relationship. Are they finding the right candidates? Are there areas for improvement? Continuously evaluate the effectiveness of the relationship to ensure you’re getting the results you want.

Consider Blue Arrow's Managed Service Solutions

With Blue Arrow's managed service, employers can save on agency fees through automation-driven efficiencies and advanced management insights, which optimise staffing, skills, and resource deployment. The service offers unparalleled direct fill with an extensive and diverse community of temporary staff, ensuring a strong brand reputation for direct fulfilment. Additionally, employers benefit from scalability and flexibility through real-time staffing data and advanced visibility and control over their talent pipeline, supported by a national recruitment and talent solutions network.

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