On 29 September 2022, Geoff Hall, UK HR Director for World Duty Free and Mahj Hussain, Client Partnership Director for ResourceBank, presented at the #AvatureUpfront conference in Madrid. They told the story of how World Duty Free was able to hire 1,000 new staff at the start of 2022 to ensure all stores re-opened following the Covid epidemic.
Here is a summary of their talk:
Geoff Hall said “I want to take everybody back to early 2020. World Duty Free in the UK had a record £1 billion sales year in 2019 primarily through our shops at 25 UK airports. We were growing, innovating, and employing more than 4,000 staff in retail, logistics and head office roles. Then COVID-19 happened. We closed completely – from £100m sales a month to zero.
Recovery was painfully slow, and only at the end of 2021 that we began to re-open everywhere. However, having been shut for longer than many UK organisations, we had suffered attrition and to be back to full capacity for the summer of 2022, we needed roughly 1,000 new colleagues. This is when the UK faced the most challenging recruitment conditions in years. And we needed them security cleared. And I had no in-house recruitment team. But I did have ResourceBank and Avature.”
Mahj Hussain, Client Partnership Director at ResourceBank, went on to say: “We were also flying high when COVID came along. We were set for a record year and won the best RPO award in 2021. We were able to retain our key staff recruiting for Care homes, so when the call from Geoff came, we had some of our original WDF team ready to start. Plus, we recruited & trained a team of new sourcers and recruiters. At the time, all airport-based businesses were under pressure to recruit, so the added competition and the uncertainty of working in an airport meant we had a challenge!”
Attraction
We developed a careers website with an embedded Avature candidate portal in 2018, so we were quickly able to advertise vacancies there and on job boards and social media. Everyone who had previously expressed an interest in working for WDF received personalised WDF branded emails, SMS and workflow reminders through our Avature instance. We also used refer-a-friend and recruitment fairs to attract new candidates to WDF. More than 30,000 candidates applied as a result of this activity.
Assessment
With more than 30,000 applications to process, the Avature interview timeslot portal, which allows candidates to book an interview at a time that suited them, played a key role. The timeslot portal reduced process time by 50% and allowed the recruitment team to interview over 5,000 candidates. We knew that speed and candidate care was key, and our Avature Hiring manager portal enabled WDF managers to assess 1600 candidates using digital interviews, one-to-one interview and group assessments.
Onboarding
Working within an airport environment brings many challenges, including security clearance. This can be a lengthy process. Our Avature onboarding portal was designed to let candidates give information required to onboard them quickly and efficiently and keep them engaged, and give them a flavour of what they can expect when they join WDF. This year we introduced a completely paper free experience for candidates, removing the need to send out a paper contract, speeding up the onboarding process and reducing the processing time on offers by 50%.
The Results
Geoff: “32,300 applications, 5,200 interviews by ResourceBank, 1.650 by WDF Managers led to 1,020 offers. The hit rate of 2 offers for every 3 WDF interviews is outstanding, and the engagement, satisfaction & feedback from candidates was excellent. Remember – this is a time when other airport employers could not hire enough staff – leading to flights being cancelled and negative headlines in the press. All of our stores are fully operational thanks to the amazing efforts of our staff and ResourceBank.”
If you’d like to learn more about how we’re assisting our current clients and how this might give your company an advantage in the current labour market, please contact Charlotte Todd-Smith (Head of Client Development).
