RPO and Talent Management Blog by Ochre House | Ochre Talk

“Big Bang” vs. phased RPO implementation

The decision has been made, a new recruitment solution is about to be born and you have the ideal partner on board to deliver it. In some cases, the need to get the new service in and embedded can’t come quickly enough! In others cases, a more considered approach is required. For each implementation, regardless of an aggressive or more appropriately paced plan, one of the first elements to understand is how the project will be delivered. For a multi-country RPO solution, do you go live with all locations at the same time (big bang) or a phased approach?

There are certainly positives and negatives for both options. In some cases the big bang approach may be governed by the organisations infrastructure. If the implementation involves introducing or replacing existing recruitment software where there is a relationship with the Human Resource Information System (particularly seen in large, global organisations), this may be a key driver for the big bang approach. Where there are very many different recruitment processes within each country and the key driver is to consolidate to one main process across the organisation, then a phased approach would be more appropriate.

Whichever route is selected, the same methodology needs to be applied throughout the project. There are five key stages to implementing a new recruitment service. Those being:

• Discovery
• Planning
• Transition
• Steady State
• Transformation

Of course discovery and planning stages do take longer when there are multiple countries in the equation. Workshops with the key stakeholders preferably need to take place face to face which takes time to get individual’s diaries aligned. Most organisations should take the opportunity to harmonise and consolidate existing ways of working, tools and templates therefore the phased approach is highly recommended. It allows for tweaks to be made to the process, to technology where relevant, before committing to the rest of the organisation. This does mean that careful consideration needs to be made on which locations should be first. Where are the more robust processes in place? Where is there more resource internally to commit time to the project? Usually the locations where the hiring volumes are higher form part of phase 1.

To go live with all locations at the same time is a somewhat more risky strategy however it does mean that everyone gets the benefit of the new solution immediately. The communication plan, which is one of key parts to a project such as this, needs to be very finely tuned in order for a successful roll out of this nature. Resource needs to be committed from the start to enable all locations to be aligned and ready for the agreed go live date.

There needn’t be large time gaps from phase 1 to phase 2/3. Typically a 12 week programme will allow for a ‘big bang’ or a phased implementation. Whichever approach is decided, it will be a very busy 12 week journey!

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