Telefónica UK Limited is a leading provider of mobile and broadband services to consumers and businesses across the UK and is part of Telefónica Europe Plc., which also delivers telecommunications services in Germany, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Highly ambitious and conscious of the rapid pace of change in the communications sector, the organisation is undergoing constant transformation with the goal of becoming the leading digital communications brand in all of its geographical markets. Key to this is the ability to define, attract and retain individuals who are not just able to maintain ‘business as usual’, but who can also provide the skills and capabilities that will turn the company’s bold plans into a reality.

Telefónica UK realised that sourcing individuals who could build the next generation of the business would mean entering new talent pools that the company had not accessed before. At the same time it would be essential that the talent management strategy remained flexible and fluid and closely aligned to the ever-changing demands of the marketplace.

To make this happen Telefónica UK decided to partner with a strategic resourcing partner which could transplant expertise into the business through an ‘in-source’ approach to create a seamless and fully-embedded talent acquisition function. Specific targets included:

• Improving the calibre and fit of new hires
• Reducing the time to and cost of hire
• Simplification of recruitment operations
• Maximisation of the employer brand
• Pipelining of talent for future roles
• Creating a consistently high quality candidate experience

After an extensive review of the RPO space and an in-depth tendering process, Ochre House was selected as the partner of choice.
Ian Ruddy, European People Services Director for Telefónica Europe Plc., in his capacity of Head of UK HR Operations, Telefónica UK Limited at the time of contract implementation said;

“It was the moment when your team and the selection panel forgot where they were and started to work through a problem together that I knew we had something special. You blew us away!”

Responding to Telefónica UK’s desire to bring external market expertise in-house, Ochre House created a fully embedded resourcing function run by a highly experienced account management team responsible for all talent acquisition activities for the ‘non volume’ workforce including both recruitment and the redeployment of existing staff. The function not only focuses on sourcing individuals who match the requirements of the existing organisation, but also develops new talent pools for Telefónica UK’s increasingly diverse portfolio of businesses such as O2 Money, O2 Media and O2 Health.

So how does this work in detail? To make the function as effective as possible we implemented a delivery model consisting of:

1. Resourcing Business Partners (RBPs) aligned to business units and to their senior management and HR business partners. The RBPs take responsibility for such key areas as workforce planning, capability analysis, senior hires, succession planning, capability analysis, senior hires , succession planning and engagement and retention programmes
2. Recruiters and talent attraction specialists tasked with:
   1. building internal and external talent communities, improving employer brand, monitoring passive talent pools and ensuring diversity
   2. managing the end-to-end recruitment process on a day-to-day basis
3. Working closely with commercial project teams to pipeline talent for potential new business areas

In addition we provide Telefónica UK with meaningful and insightful management information to speed up processes and ensure increased compliance.

The results have been little short of transformational

• Average time to hire reduced from 52 to 32 days
• Agency usage reduced from 85% to just 14%
• Average cost of hire cut by more than two-thirds
• Internal mobility dramatically increased
• Succession planning directly linked to the increasing diversification of the business

And throughout the relationship we have worked on the basis that this is not a simple supplier/customer agreement, but a genuine business partnership. Which means we deliver what Telefónica UK needs, when, where and how Telefónica UK needs it. Because, Ian Ruddy, puts it, “The day you get the contract out of the drawer, that’s the day you don’t have a partnership at all.”

“Feedback from my board colleagues has been outstanding”

Ann Pickering, Human Resources Director, Telefónica UK Limited

“Working together with Ochre House to build our own in-house capability has quite simply enabled us to have the very best of both worlds”

Ronan Dunn, CEO, Telefónica UK Limited