Issue 108 - 28th September - 26th October
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Having opened its first one-hour opticians in 1988, Vision Express now has 200 stores nationwide. With more than 100 ways to assess eyes, providing professional eye care of the highest standard is its priority; coupled with state-of-the-art technology Vision Express remains the pioneer of the one-hour service, giving customers the flexibility and convenience they desire. Fourteen million people walked into Vision Express last year.
Serious investment in people means upwards of a dozen staff at every store — with the flagship Oxford Street store having 75. In 2006, the Vision Express HR function looks after 3,500+ personnel, a constantly growing management task. Its systems not only deliver effective management of the current workforce, but are designed with future growth in mind.
Kate Clayton, Vision Express HR manager, explains: “We are working to a corporate strategy for significant expansion during the immediate future. Within the next five years, another 100 stores bearing the Vision Express name will open — meaning another 1,000 employees. At its simplest, a £1 cost-per-hire reduction saves us £1,000 in reaching our growth target.”
Ed Sweeting, Vision Express recruitment manager, has to find these new staff. He explains: “We normally expect around 600 new starters annually, depending on new store openings and staff turnover. Of around 6,000 applicants yearly, 60 per cent come from in-store notices, with most applications on paper. The growth strategy will mean a dramatic rise in applications, increasingly submitted online.”
Online applications need appropriate processes and systems. “We thought that we already had the answer,” says Sweeting, “but found that software only works if people can use it.”
People found the system too complicated. “These were not just applicants,” Sweeting explains, “but our own staff. Even with training, they found it difficult to use — updating a record took several steps.”
With manual processing preferred, application responses could take more than a week. Part of the problem was the number of different databases, plus spreadsheet reporting in use. With the situation unsustainable for both time-to-hire and cost-per-hire, a replacement system was essential.
Sweeting explains that a handful of options were scrutinised: “Two similar systems seemed to have evolved from graduate recruitment packages. They were not inherently wrong, but did not quite fit. Others were very close to the outgoing system. Any one might have been an improvement, but we were not comfortable.”
The human element was also critical: “We wanted a powerful, easy-to-use system at a reasonable cost. It had to be simple, efficient and configurable to our needs. A crucial requirement was excellent service, from people we trusted. We found Projectix.”
In what is now known as First Advantage Hiring Management Systems, Vision Express found an applicant tracking and talent management solution which met their needs. Being accessed by a web browser, implementation was straightforward. Growing numbers of online applications indicate its ease of use.
“Where online applications accounted for around 17 per cent of the total,” comments Sweeting, “it is about 30 per cent and rising. During the first two months of 2006, we received some 1,500 applications via our web site, compared with just 400 during that period last year.”
Nor are the benefits confined to applications. Support is offered at all stages of the recruitment procedure, regardless of an application’s origin. It breaks recruitment down into six parts: job position; talent resourcing; screening and ranking; interviews and feedback; selection and offer; hiring. All necessary documentation associated with recruitment for any position can be system-generated and tracked.
“Processing is now so much faster, with the whole recruitment process streamlined,” says Sweeting. “We wouldn’t claim to be paperless yet but, in under a year, we have already processed more than 4,000 applications with the First Advantage system. The average time-to-hire is currently 5.9 per cent shorter than previously.”
Better processing means lower costs. After deduction of system costs, there was a net reduction of £43,000 in the annual costs of the Recruitment Department, with average cost per hire cut from £264 in 2004 to £163 in 2005. More people joined during 2005 than in 2004, but if the same numbers had been recruited, cost-per-hire would still have been reduced to £204.
Vision Express has been impressed with the level of service, with the customer/supplier relationship being more akin to a partnership and dialogue not being confined to the quarterly reviews. “We make the occasional suggestion, they listen, then they come back with a solution,” comments Sweeting.
First Advantage delivers what Vision Express needed. Ed Sweeting summarises, “Users don’t struggle with an unfriendly system. Applicants don’t fight through a procedural minefield. We recruit faster, at a lower cost per hire, with complete vision on every stage of the process. We save time and money, we recruit more effectively and we deal with real people who are open to what we have to say. That is all we wanted from application management and we found it with First Advantage.”
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