RPO and Talent Management Blog by Ochre House | Ochre Talk

Since Q4 2009 we have seen a huge surge in activity around Resourcing functions.  The two key challenges that kept coming up are: A need to increase capability and globalisation.  

The first is not hard to figure out why as many business needed to increase capability where perhaps divestment had been the order of the previous 2 years.  There has certainly been much greater interest in “Outsourcing” resourcing but perhaps not for the obvious reason of increased flexibility (of cost base) and reduced overall costs.  The key driver we are seeing is that businesses are seriously concerned about being able to compete for, win and retain the best talent in the market place.  They realise that resourcing is becoming more and more complex with a need for good, flexible resource planning to try to deliver against often ever-changing needs of the businesses, coupled with high levels of engagement and innovation in the attraction and selection processes in order to bring the best talent in.   If they can’t deliver these then they may well be left constantly on the back foot and with little chance of delivering what the business demands.

The other key driver has been globalisation with larger businesses wanting to increase economies of scale whilst maximising cross-border mobility for internal talent.  The big challenge in Europe has been how to create efficiencies in such a diverse region, whilst delivering leading-edge service locally to candidate community, hiring managers and HR alike.  Europe really is the antithesis of the homogenised market place and therefore requires wide spread local knowledge and engagement, which often creates cost challenges.  There is no one way that works best as each company culture is unique, and we are fortunate to have spoken to many organisations who do things quite differently,  which makes for very rich debate!

At Ochre House we are running 2 workshops in the next 2 months to address these topics http://www.ochrehouse.com/HR-Network-Knowledge-Centre/Event-Schedule-81.  Please let us know if these are challenges you are facing, and if you would like to add to the debate.

Whether to approach strategic resourcing on a global, regional or local basis seems to be a hot topic for almost every HR professional involved in talent management.  Equally, RPO providers are working hard to tie up alliances or even acquire businesses in other parts of the world to ensure a credible regional or international capability. 
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