Snowdrop’s BPE focuses on the key issues around your HR and/or H&S concerns – from policy and process legal compliance health checks, to evaluating the effectiveness of current processes, such as recruitment, performance management and learning & development. We tailor an agenda for the day with you, which sits on a skeleton framework of objectives such as: Determining the current ‘as is’ state to draw out issues/problem areas and business risks Assessing existing data accuracy and management information requirements Identifying solution ‘to be’ state options and how to mitigate the risks Providing a report summary, recommended actions, timeline and action owners The BPE is of particular use to Snowdrop’s new and existing software clients and is now a standard part of the implementation process. The service provides clients with a real opportunity to revisit, amend or even redesign HR processes, in order to ensure the effectiveness of their design and contribution to business goals, while highlighting which functions in your software can help throughout the process stages. Example problem pre-software implementation Following a tailored agenda that focused on recruitment process improvement, the BPE half day workshop established that: The attrition rate for new hires was in double figures, with a significant proportion being either forced leavers or voluntary, which indicated a problem with both recruiting the right people and encouraging people to remain with the business The bulk of the recruitment was in one area of the business, where they were already standing at 15 employees below headcount, with the added complication of a business plan to raise headcount by 39% over the next 12 – 24 months There were high agency costs and a variable quality of potential candidates being put forward A tendency to recruit reactively Based on these findings and a full discussion, the workshop report made a number of recommendations, including: Running parallel processes – continuing the present recruitment process in the short term with a new recruitment process running alongside it Implementing a greater range of working patterns to provide evening shift opportunities Implementing role rotation to increase skill flexibility and understanding of how the business runs Recruiting contract HR support with the right profile, to release the HR Manager for more value-added, rather than administrative, activities. It was recommended this contract resource be used to do, amongst others: Rationalise job descriptions to hold agencies to account if they do not supply candidates meeting specified criteria (with financial penalties if necessary) Utilise a central candidate repository for impressive candidates Build a new induction programme addressing probationary period monitoring and a ‘buddying’ system for new recruits Design a brief and focused staff survey to elicit ideas, take a temperature check and provide feedback on what staff sensitivities are, going forward