Recruitment and Recruitment Process Outsourcing to... Guernsey?

Nestling in the Channel Islands, Guernsey has a reputation for natural beauty, flowers and tomatoes and, more recently, of being a leading offshore financial centre. It is also thought of as an expensive, up market place where the lifestyle is great but houses cost a fortune and local skills are in short supply. It is a place also of good management, ethics, confidentiality and good practice in a favourable, stable legislative environment with good government. It is perhaps more thought of as the place to go for lifestyles reason when you have sold your business and made your pile.

However, the island has, perhaps, not been thought of as an ideal place from which to build a business and certainly not as a centre for outsourcing. Not till now that is. GBOPS ñ a Guernsey based company has been established with subsidiaries and links to India so that the best of Guernseyís track record is combined with the best of Indiaís skills in an innovative approach designed to partner professionals Recruitment and HR across 7000 miles.

2006 has to some extent seen the coming of age of BPO as it reaches beyond the domains of the global organisations that had previously reserved the benefits for themselves and becomes accessible and affordable to SMEís in professional services such as HR and Recruitment.

In some areas unions and labour have begun to resist what seems like an inevitable, long term realignment of jobs akin to the changes that took place in shipbuilding, coal, steel etc 25 years ago and which helped trigger similar changes in some blue and white collar jobs also. The concerns are understandable but history and experience clearly show that when the economic fundamentals move on in line with changes in technology that make possible other ways of working then jobs and process inevitably follow so that people and businesses change with the market or risk suffering the consequences.

The virtually unlimited human and skilled resources of India have become the topic for consideration by most business managers who must deal with options to cut costs, increase resources and bring about great flexibility and innovation in their business or face the verdict of the market and the success of those of their competitors who do the job properly. If outsourcing works in so many field then why, we asked, might in not work in employment?

Most BPO decisions, as opposed to outsourcing tasks and/or project management, are made by large companies with big wallets and lots of the patience required to get it right. Having over five years successfully completed an innovative BPO process for our own Human Resource Management and Recruitment operations, GBOPS began to extend its operations to the business back office processes of other professional services companies also to give them access to additional, affordable resources.

Says Michael Taylor, a director of GBOPS and the originator of the first BPO activities ñ ìwe believed that we could re-engineer our HR and Recruitment processes and web enable them. If we could do that we could create a central resource centre that would allow us, and our associates, to operate as a worldwide facility. Had we tried to achieve these objectives in any other way, outside India it would have cost us an arm and a leg and would have required us to raise capital. That would have either made us run harder for longer or have left us with little or no equity in our own business. It would probably have been unaffordable by any other means at the levels of excellence we set ourselvesî.

When asked about the problems associated with setting up in India Michael told us ìfirst you need endless patience and stamina. Then you need to get to understand how to get the best out of your Indian team for which you almost certainly need a new management and HR process. You need familiarity with the culture, to understand the caste and class system and the hierarchy it brings about. You must gain an understanding of how a team with lots of talent can also have no real concept of health and safety, or customer service or mutual trust or loyalty.

It sounds awful to say these things but only if you recognise the realities can you really outsource successfully. We have a stable, loyal team working together doing things in a matrix management system that everyone told me would not, could not work in India. The GBOPS teams give the lie to that ñ they love it and have come to realise that when we ask for opinions we want to know what they think rather than to have heir acquiescence to every daft idea we might come up withî.

Michael is married to a lady of Punjabi origin which presumably means you had a head start ñ could you have done it without that Indian background? ìNo, we could not. Equally, even with that advantage we could not have completed the process at both ends without the balanced team of managers having international experience to draw onî.

Where and how far can this take the recruitment industry, we asked? Michael told us ìAs far as you like. Our experience with HR has shown us that by careful planning and working with your client in a transparent way you can develop and evolve a BPO/RPO approach with a minimum of risk and disruption. We can cut costs, increase flexibility and improve operational effectiveness in terms of research, marketing, billing, data management, web management, job descriptions, response management and candidate liaison and interview arrangements ñ about 30 to 35% is a working figure for savings over direct costs but there are other benefits also, less obvious but there to be exploited. You know you are getting somewhere when you hear a young graduate in India telling HR that the candidate cannot get from Liverpool to their location before 09:00 unless they stay overnight. Similarly it was a joy to see another member of our team ñ someone who has never seen the ocean ñ making arrangements for an employee of NASA who was working in Mexico to fly to Europe for a job interview for work with ESA.

Clearly this is an approach whose time has come. We are developing ideas with a number of recruitment professionals to create a range of solutions with, and for them, the kind of partnerships that are needed for the future of recruitment, HR and head hunting. It is not really rocket science. If you are a successful experienced consultant working in the NW of England with an office in London then does it matter if your highly qualified assistants are delivering your work and/or research from 7000 miles away rather than from 220 miles away in London?î

ìThere is no doubt about the benefits but inevitably there are real issues are around confidentiality and working together. To be frank there is not a lot of trust in the recruitment sector which is not known either for its willingness to co-operate with each other. Consequently, the first thought of many is yes, but what about data and client security etc? Of course there are practical answers to every concern ñ we have to show that every day to people who are not easily convinced - but security is not just a single fix but is rather a part of a long term culture. This means that BPO for recruitment is only truly possible between partners; it is for those who really want to make it happen. The justification is that the benefits can be significant and lasting. Fortunately, there is a growing number of people in recruitment who can see the long term inevitability of what technology and culture are now making possibleî.

So, behind the nice words it is still exporting jobs, we ask? ìNot at allî is the firm response. In terms of our operations - most of the work we are doing or evaluating is actually bringing new services, addition revenue to the island ñ business that would not otherwise be viable from the island as a base. In terms of the professional services business we support ñ they simply shift their resources to spend more time in customer facing roles.

The real importance is where value is added and that usually demands ideas being developed taking them with affordable resources to the global market? Exporting jobs? No. Exporting ideas and finding new ways to attract new business that might not otherwise be possible, certainly?

We can see a time when a collective of small agencies sharing a central resource but with their own dedicated teams can become a global operation fully capable of punching its weight ñ capabilities and marketing - in the worldwide market along with the big boys but at a fraction of their costs and with none of their bureaucracyî

There you have it ñ Guernsey as a centre for outsourcing. ìGuernsey, where you can cut your costs, increase your resources, become more flexible whilst preserving confidentiality, quality and ethicsî. Quite a new message donít you think?

Michael Taylor
GBOPS
Michael.taylor@gbops.com
www.gbops.com