S
Soundbites | Catalyst
HIVE MINDS
H
ow do you identify the
technology solutions you need
for your business? With so much
noise in the HR space, picking the
right platform has never been more
important. Through Alexander
Mann Solutions' partnership
network, The Hive, we help our
partners innovate, validate and
execute. Chris Milligan, CEO of
technical engineering recruitment
consultancy Adepto, talks about his
company's total talent platform,
and how The Hive has connected
our clients to Adepto's services.
Could you introduce us to Adepto
and the service you provide?
We focus on helping our customers
achieve total talent – which in our
Going public
Maggie Tonge,
senior commercial
specialist, Crown
Commercial Service
P
ublic Sector
Resourcing is
helping to connect
contingent workers to
public-sector positions.
We spoke to Maggie
Tonge from Crown
Commercial Service,
the UK government’s
procurement
organisation, to
demystify the process.
alexandermannsolutions.com
10
Q
mind is having a single view of the
skills available to your business. This
includes permanent employees,
contractors, alumni, freelancers and
people who may want to work for
you in the future. We help businesses
match the work they need to get done
with the right candidates, regardless of
their employment statuses.
How does this benefit
organisations?
A lot of businesses look at talent in silos.
They’ll look at contractors but have
another team looking at permanents.
It’s inefficient. We’ve helped clients
reduce their lead time for finding
external resource from around two
to three weeks to two days. We also
make sure that the skills of workers are
What does Crown
Commercial Service
do and what challenges
are you facing in terms
of recruiting into the
public sector?
Crown Commercial Service
is an executive body and
trade organisation within
the UK’s Cabinet Office, and
a procurement organisation
which is there to support the
leveraging of common goods
and services across all of the
public sector spend areas
and sectors.
One of our key areas
of responsibility is the
procurement of non-
p e r m a n e n t w o r k e r s.
Currently, we total around
12,000 workers, with about
6,500 admin and clerical
staff and the rest white-
collar professional day-
rate workers. In the public
sector, we are responding
tracked and updated so a business has
memory of who’s worked on a project.
It’s not just about getting people
in, it’s about the people you already
have and knowing you don’t need to
look elsewhere.
How does the platform help
prospective candidates or
freelance workers?
For users, it’s about helping them show
organisations their full self: their skill
base, their aspirations, when and where
they’re available to work. It gets people
work that suits them.
Does this allow businesses to
attract more diverse talent?
We’re trying to support diversity,
but not by artificial intelligence or
to the challenging aspects
of contingent labour and
talent, as well as to the
challenges around the
flexible workforce.
We’re making sure that,
in terms of the breadth and
blend of the workforce, the
civil service is fit for now and
for the future. Our previous
models in government
were very reliant on
finding workers through
staffing agencies. That was
something we wanted to
change – recognising that
workers, for the most part,
are finding a lot of their next
assignments themselves.
We want to take advantage
of technology’s disruptive
impact on the market and to
ensure that the programmes
we put in place reflect
changes in contingent-
labour solutions on the
digital side of things. We
also wanted something slick
and exciting, so that great
contingent talent comes
to the public sector first –
because we need them.
Q
Why is Public
Sector Resourcing
(PSR) necessary?
It’s vital to make the work
of government more
transparent to workers. A
lot of the time it can feel
quite hidden – you have to
know someone to get a role.
That’s not what PSR is about.
It’s about accessibility,
transparency, connecting.
We wanted to remove
the mystery of finding
an assignment and to
be able to engage with
contingent workers directly
and use them as part of
our total workforce. We
therefore created the ‘PSR
Marketplace’, essentially a