Episode 9

Cia: Welcome to Employee Activation, the HR podcast that takes you into the minds of some of the world's brightest workforce strategists to find out how they make both their employees and their organisations thrive.

Hiring has always been one of the riskiest, most critical decisions an organisation can make, but in a world where speed, adaptability, and skill shortages are reshaping every industry, traditional hiring models just aren't keeping up.

So how do we move faster? How do we de-risk workforce decisions? And most importantly, how do we build a workforce that's ready to deliver from day one, not six months down the track?

I'm Cia Kouparitsas and today I'm joined by Nick Walrond, the Managing Director at Sanderson, an expert in helping organisations rethink hiring and workforce strategy through a skills first lens.

Today we're diving in to how a recruit, train, deploy model, or RTD model, is giving businesses a smarter, faster, and lower risk way to build capability that they need today. And why making skills, the foundation of your workforce is now a major competitive advantage.

Welcome to the podcast, Nick.

Nick: Hello.

Cia: Good to have you here now, I would really love to start, I guess just by framing the conversation, you know, we talk about a recruit, deploy, training model like everyone knows what it is, but I, I don't think everyone necessarily does. And I know that this is a space, um, that you guys are really investing in.

So can you just talk to us a bit about how Sanderson view and use an RTD program with your clients?

Nick: Yeah, sure. There's, um, I think we fundamentally use it in two different ways. So the key sort of pillar of these models is to look at entry level staff. Um, and our orientation is towards the digital data, cyber skills marketplace.

I think, uh, as a, as a principle entry point for resource to come into an organisation and be operating at the lower grade delivery structures, I think that's a key way of using it. And we will look for long term programs that we're engaged with, with clients where we know that the skills requirement is gonna be over multi years, um, and then propose an RTD model at the entry point of those long-term engagements.

So that's, that's one fundamental way of using, it's probably the, quite the, the traditional way that RTD has been used in the marketplace.

The second way we use it is for what we would call a skills accelerator. So there, there's a lot of niche skill requirement in our marketplace, particularly when we're facing off into digital cyber data skills into key government organisations.

And so we look to use the principles of an RTD model, but with people with more experience, um, who might not have the niche skill set that the client requires, but have a base level of technical or digital or cyber understanding and can be accelerated to the specific skill that's needed for the government customer.

That's, and that's helping us address certain skills area that particularly short of talent in the UK market at the moment.

Cia: And would you say that that is kind of the most fast-growing area as well? Because I think you sort of hit the nail on the head that you've got these roles and areas that are in high demand and a lot of the time I think it's probably 'cause technology is evolving so quickly that the workforce just can't keep up.

Nick: I think there's fundamental skill shortages in the UK for certain skill areas. We as a country are awash with talent and people, but they're not just, they're just not necessarily aligned to the specific skills requirement of the transformation that's going on. And particularly a, a lot of our work faces off into secure parts of government.

You overlay the skills requirement with a need to have staff that are UK nationals and cleared to various different levels in the UK and suddenly you reduce the, the available skills population considerably. So that creates some tension around certain skills, and you can't rely on traditional staffing and recruitment models to, to solve that skills problem.

So you need to look at the, the challenge through a different lens and suddenly then skills-based hiring and skills accelerators and training people on the job in order to have that skill set and hold them in role for a longer period of time become quite critical ways to solve what is a fundamental skills problem.

Cia: Absolutely. And Nick, obviously you guys are quite progressive in the way that you think about this. I'm sure though there are many organisations who are only just starting to explore this idea of skills-based and they're, um, more reliant on that traditional model of experience or qualifications.

How do you talk to them about the need to do this? Is it, is it a straightforward conversation that everyone gets or is there sort of, um, some persuasion and, and explaining that needs to happen?

Nick: I wish it was a straightforward conversation. I've been in the recruitment and staffing sector for 30 years now, um, and we've been talking for a good 25 of those year, those years about how the, the sector needs to progress and move away from traditional CV based hiring models. Those conversations have been going on for an extended period of time. The momentum and the pickup of true skills-based hiring models has been a lot, lot slower.

Um, I think maybe in the last five years we've started to see a little bit more uptake on it, but it's nowhere near the level I think it needs to be if we're gonna capitalise on the resources available and offset that availability of resource against the lack of certain skills in the marketplace.

We've got some really good examples actually, of where we've taken the CV out of our own process. Um, we've baselined the skills requirement from the client side of things, taken the CV out, looked to do a skills-based assessment to identify individuals that have the skills, competence to be able to do the role and then layered in, um, structured training programs to upskill them to be able to take on the role that we've been targeting.

By doing that, suddenly we have a far more diverse entry into those organisations. Quite often, these are organisations that would traditionally hire graduates and only graduates from certain universities. Suddenly they are in patterns, are picking up people with very broad, different education backgrounds, very different social backgrounds.

It enables a pickup of more resource from underrepresented groups. And so you just end up with a more diverse population and a population that traditionally wouldn't be hired by those, those firms because the traditional process would be, um, sort of a, a CV and an interview with probably some unconscious bias weaved into that interview and, and so what we're, we're striving to do by using skills-based hiring approaches, is take some of that away, um, in order to, to attract in quite different populations.

Cia: I love that, Nick. And I also think you touched on something quite interesting, which is this idea of mindset and culture fit as well.

Because I think particularly when you're looking and talking about some of those digital and tech roles that you guys are, are looking to fill. Skills can be taught and they can be picked up. But what's really difficult is getting the right kind of person who's gonna match with your team and really have that right mindset to step into a role.

Is, is that a benefit that you're seeing customers see by taking this approach?

Nick: Yeah, a hundred percent. Probably answering your question in a different way is I think, um, a lot of our client base are tech heavy organisations. Um, and traditionally have, typically hired from the, the usual sort of graduate recruitment streams.

Those individuals will have high levels of ambition, high levels of aptitude, and will quite often progress through roles very quickly. And yet the challenge on, uh, a lot of the big tech transformation programs that we look to engage on is, how do you keep resource on program for a long period of time?

These, these can be 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 year programs that need resource, that learn the program, learn the, the requirements of the transformation that's being implemented. You wanna hold resource on those programs for as long as possible. Give them the opportunity for progression, but keep them interested and engaged in the journey that that program is going on.

By hiring from more diverse communities, you pick up different cultural aspects, but you also pick up a greater loyalty to the skill and the role that they're entering into. And so we'll typically find those individuals will stick to task for a longer period of time than a classic graduate recruitment round is gonna produce.

Cia: Yes. So you've got that retention benefit where you're investing in someone from the beginning, but they're sticking with you and growing their career with your organisation, which just pays back in dividends, as we all know.

Nick: Yeah, a hundred percent.

Cia: Nick, can you share, you've kind of, um, given us a lot of great examples, but I'm wondering if there is a particular example of a client, um, that you've worked with where you've deployed talent through an RTD model?

And what some of those outcomes were that they've seen. So obviously, you know, you've spoken to great diversity in teams, but are there any particularly great case studies that come to mind of this model in action?

Nick: I think probably our best-case study would be in a cyber skill area. So there's a huge shortage of cyber skills in the UK.

We were facing a real challenge recruiting for this organisation in that the, the skills weren't readily available. Um, and the nuance of the deployment meant that, um, it was gonna be impossible for us to hire the number of roles that they needed from the active candidate marketplace. Their grad scheme wasn't delivering what they needed either.

And so we talked to them over a long period of time about what the requirement was and what the UK skills market could deliver them. Um, we weren't particularly solving the problem and the, as a staffing and recruitment business, kind of wanna solve the problem, but at the same time, you're sensitive to what the market can deliver.

So the best we could do is drip feed resource to them on a sort of person-by-person basis, rather than give them cohorts and individuals that could land and be developed over a longer period of time. They definitely had the challenge of a lack of diversity in the hiring and while, the business unit hired to an exceptionally high bar of entry, the organisation itself wanted to look at a different flow of individuals coming through.

So we, we spent a lot of time investing in what does the skills profile of the ideal individual look like. Um, we baselined the skills level of the existing staff in the organisation, and we, whilst it was a cyber requirement, we identified that a level of coding capability was the in essence, the base skill of the individual. Um, we developed a coding test, um, that we felt delivered the right baseline person so we could assess the skill of the individuals. We led in an attraction campaign that looked at attracting from multiple different sources.

So this, this was pushed out to some Neurodiverse communities. Um, some social value communities, some underrepresented groups in the locales that they were looking to hire from. Um, we also ran some hackathon forums, which enabled us to access tech individuals that, that came from a hundred percent different backgrounds.

And we were looking at this as a challenge rather than as a career opportunity. Um, anybody that passed that challenge then had the opportunity to go into the coding test, and anybody that passed the coding test was guaranteed an interview. So there was, there was a lot of work building that the top end of that funnel.

We also took the CV out of the interview process, coached the assessors to assess based on competence, not based on CV. And by removing the CV, we helped with removing some of the unconscious bias that exists in the interview process. The output of all of that has been three tranches of 20 individuals over multi years that have landed into the program.

The retention rates are phenomenal, and over a three-year exercise with this client, we've created 60 individuals with a skillset that just didn't exist before we, we started those programs. So it's partnering with an end client to understand what the problem is, and then looking at that problem through a different lens and trying to tackle all the challenges that various business units in the end client had, has resulted in the influx of 60 individuals with a skillset that is pretty unique in the UK, and I don't think would exist if we hadn't done the program that way.

Cia: Incredible. And, uh, it's great just to see how creative you can get with this stuff. And I love a hackathon. If you want people with tech skills who just get in there and solve a problem, you run a hackathon. It's a very effective, effective recruitment drive. So well done.

Nick: Yeah. And it's, it's not a failsafe in terms of having people involved that are definitely going to want to apply for the roles that come through. You kind of have to do it as a, as an added value to the attraction strategy that you're doing that gives you access to different groups, and I think that's part of what we get excited about actually, is using these skills-based hiring methods to go out to really underrepresented groups and start to pick people up from channels that you just wouldn't engage in the roles if you weren't doing a skills-based hiring exercise and you weren't making it appropriate to those groups of individuals.

Cia: So true. We've run many hackathons in our time as well, and one of the greatest benefits I've seen are with some members of our Neurodiverse community who wouldn't typically feel super comfortable in a traditional environment of an interview, but unleash them in a hackathon and they can showcase all of these incredible skills they have in, in a forum that's really great and comfortable for them.

Nick: Fantastic the difference that can make particularly to neurodivergent communities. We run a similar program for another client, which is much smaller than the one I've just talked about, which focuses on autistic resources. So that's working with a partner organisation to run a recruit, train, deploy program specifically into autistic communities.

And the feedback from the end customer is fantastic in that once, once you've got over the hurdle of attracting these people and making this sort of assessment and selection process okay for all parties, and it is all parties that are engaged with it that need support and assistance. The quality of the resource and the quality of the technical capability of those resources when harnessed is, is fantastic.

It ticks so many boxes and they get huge amounts of loyalty from the resource that land onto the program. It's definitely something we're looking to expand over the course of the next couple of years.

Cia: It's great to hear. So for those organisations that have a need to scale their workforce, uh, but they may be relying on those traditional hiring methods, what advice would you give them about getting started with a skills-first or an RTD approach?

Nick: I'd one hundred percent encourage them to, to be really open-minded to a skills-based hiring approach from day one. We tend to look at this on multi-year programs because it's probably the easiest place to operate. Um, however, I think standard transactional hiring processes would all benefit from a skills-based hiring approach.

So if you can identify cohorts of individuals in your organisation that, that you, you feel, uh, good at delivering against the role just to be, to baseline their skill set and understand what's the commonality of skill that exists in, in those groups, and then begin to hire to that skills profile. I think it challenges you to change your perception of the people that you will engage with.

And I say this because my world is orientated to digital data, cyber, and technical skills, but I can't see the skills problem getting any easier in the UK over the course of the next X amount of years. And, um, I have a real passion for the fact that we should be looking at our entry level resource from a skills perspective rather than education perspective.

Um, and also looking at engaging with other generations to be re-skilled into certain skills areas and by assessing them in a completely different way. We've written a white paper recently on the challenges of multi-generational workforce and that throws up lots and lots of interesting opportunities and challenges to the UK where we've got an aging workforce, we've got a birth rate that won't sustain the economy over a longer period of time.

That means we, we have to find ways of engaging with different ages and stages in people's, uh, careers to get them mobilised to solve the digital data cyber challenge that we're gonna have.

Cia: Look, I think it's a universal challenge, you, you know, you're speaking about the UK but obviously we, uh, we work across Australia, United States, Canada, a few different markets, and it's certainly, um, a theme that is resonating across the board.

So I think hearing the work you guys are doing in this space is something that will be, uh, very relevant for many different listeners.

Now, the final question, um, I have, and it's one that we ask all of our guests, is really about activating people. So what tips do you have, Nick um, whether it's Sanderson or more broadly with what you've seen with your end customers, where you can really activate and support employees to help them realise their potential and align their aspirations with organisational goals?

Nick: That's a really challenging question. I think there's, there's a good part of the answer is down to culture. So you, you sort of need the right culture of organisation where people have an ability to fail fast, an ability to learn quickly, an ability to try, um, different things without any fear of failure.

I think for us, you know, we're a, a mid-size organisation in, in our sector, I think it's really important to get as many of our staff involved in these programs as possible and for them to see the benefit. And so certainly, when I'm looking to take a different solution to marketplace, the staff that engage with that best are the ones that have been on that journey.

So have been involved in one of these programs, have seen the benefit of that program, seen how much of a difference it can make, um, and therefore buy it because they can see it in action. They can feel the benefit to our customer and to the individuals that are getting deployed. That's a slow burn in terms of how we develop our staff to latch in and achieve their aspirations with it.

And so, so you, you need a culture of sharing and you need a culture where you get as many people involved in this as, as is possible in order to gather momentum. I definitely feel that we're, we are in a momentum world at the moment, whereas 10 years ago we were talking about skills-based hiring and it just wasn't happening at all.

So I do think that change is coming. I just don't think it's coming at a pace that is necessarily gonna solve the overarching skills problem at this moment in time.

Cia: Could not agree with you more on that one Nick, it's great to see this, uh, this area gaining momentum and, um, it can't happen soon enough.

So thank you so much. It was such an insightful discussion, and I'm sure a lot of our listeners are walking away today with new ideas as to how they can de-risk their hiring, accelerate their capability development, and really future-proof their workforce.

So for those who want, who would like to learn more about Nick's work or explore solutions through Sanderson, you can head to our website that's withyouwithme.com, and visit the Employee Activation podcast page, and you'll also find a heap of other practical tools and insights to help you build a workforce that's ready for what's next.

Thanks again for joining us, Nick, and we will see you all next time.