MSPs are the key to talent strategy success

Given that, for the vast majority of companies, employees are central to the continued effectiveness of their operations, it is a business imperative that this adaptability and responsiveness be entrenched into workforce management practices, particularly those involving the contingent workforce or, as it is more commonly known, temporary staff.

Traditional 'temporary' staffing solutions have long offered businesses the means to put people in empty chairs when required, but thanks to the stellar evolution of the global business environment such temporary staffing offerings have steadily evolved to meet the more comprehensive, productivity-enhancing solutions required by employers.

These days, businesses need reliable access to contingent labour that is scalable, qualified, capable and well managed. While most human resources departments are able to deliver a good measure of this requirement, doing so is not typically the core business of these vital business support units, particularly when talent needs to be sourced from a variety of recruitment channels and staffing agencies. In addition, the imperative to stay abreast of fast-changing staffing legislation and regulations can put even more pressure on even the most competent and professional HR departments.

Interestingly, these are many of the same issues that have long plagued IT departments across the world; the only difference being that their challenges involved equipment and network services rather than human capital. Their response took the form of a Managed Service Provider (MSP) approach, which allowed them to partner a single service provider that served as the conduit through which all the necessary solutions could be accessed.

Worldwide adoption

In the past two decades, this MSP approach has been adopted by HR departments around the world, particularly in the UK and the US, as a workable solution to the complex challenge of effective contingent staffing in highly dynamic and increasingly diverse business environments.

According to Paula Croeser, MD of M Squared - a South African provider of Managed Service Provider (MSP) and Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) Solutions - the appeal of this partnership-based, fully outsourced approach to human capital management is growing rapidly in this country.

"The incredibly competitive global business environment is leading increasing numbers of South African companies to acknowledge the importance of focusing exclusively on their core business elements," Croeser explained, "while partnering professional employee resource service providers who have the expertise and capacity to deliver comprehensive, business-building staffing solutions to meet both their permanent and contingency employee needs."

According to Croeser, while uptake of MSP and RPO solutions in South Africa has significantly lagged that of many other countries, the demand for these 'one stop' staffing solutions is now rapidly gaining momentum locally. She attributes this to the growing recognition amongst South African businesses of the immense value that managed contingency staffing and end-to-end permanent employee recruitment solutions can add to their organisations, often without requiring anything near the levels of investment of time or money that would be required to establish these capabilities internally.

"It isn't difficult to see the appeal of MSP and RPO solutions," she emphasised, "particularly given the significant cost savings, staffing risk management, and productivity enhancement benefits that these offer."

Cost savings

In support of her argument, she pointed to a study conducted by Aberdeen Group in 2013, the results of which showed that companies with MSP programmes in place demonstrated statistically significant increases in regulatory compliance and cost savings over organisations without MSP partnerships. The MSP programmes were also shown to cut the time taken to fill vacant positions by up to seven days and reduce employee on-boarding time by one-quarter on average.

And Croeser is just as confident in the business-enhancing potential of RPO solutions, which essentially enable the outsourcing of the full or partial life cycle management of a company's permanent recruitment and talent acquisition requirements.

"An RPO solution has the real potential to take the effectiveness of any organisation's recruitment strategy and processes to a whole new level," she contended, "primarily through the ability of a professional RPO provider to focus on the delivery of scalable, reliable and cost-effective solutions that also offer businesses the comfort of a vetted talent pool, consistently high candidate quality and, possibly most importantly, heightened visibility for the company to enhance its reputation as an employer of choice."

For Croeser, the success of M Squared as a pioneer in the provision of MSP and RPO solutions in South Africa stems directly from the fact that, unlike traditional client supplier relationships, the MSP and RPO model is built entirely on a partnership philosophy.

"To be able to administer an effective and sustainable recruitment and employee management strategy for any business effectively, we know that we can't take a traditional arms-length outsourced approach," she said, "which is why we fully immerse ourselves in the business of our clients to enable us to develop tailored, fully integrated solutions that give effect to both their people and business strategies, providing them with the flexibility to respond to changing environments and needs, and afford them the security they need to focus on their core business."