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Novus: achieving success through a great partnership

The Challenge

Novus Property Solutions (Novus), established over 25 years ago, is an award-winning property maintenance company with a clear mission: to deliver a safe workforce that provides quality service, commitment, and sustainability to communities throughout the UK.

As part of its people strategy, Novus was looking for a resourcing partner to support the transformation of its resourcing activities to support its future growth. Their requirements included:

  • Developing a business partnering model to deliver effective and successful activities, across the organisation
  • Embedding resourcing strategies to support its broader diversity and inclusion objectives
  • Reducing times to hire and improving overall productivity
  • Reducing dependency on agency recruitment and associated costs

The Solution

The first step in the project was managed by Omni’s Resourcing Transformation Team, who conducted a Resourcing Effectiveness Assessment (REA) to evaluate each stage of the resourcing journey at Novus. The assessment included stakeholder interviews, focus groups with managers and new hires and detailed data analysis. From this initial research phase, focusing on People, Process, Technology and ED&I, we benchmarked activity against best practice (across the UK) and developed a roadmap of improvements.

Results from the REA identified several priorities and working in partnership with Novus’ HR and Resourcing Teams, we developed a programme of activity, which included the following:

Job Descriptions

Redesign of job descriptions to include company values and behaviours and optimised for diversity and inclusion.

Job Adverts

Redesign of job advert templates, to ensure Novus would stand out as a desirable and inclusive employer of choice.

Interview Guides

Supported the creation of interview guides and scoring mechanisms for hiring managers to support objective and inclusive selection.

Personas

Creation of ‘personas’ to inform candidate marketing activities, ensuring the right messaging reached the right people through the best channels to drive engagement.

Inclusive Training

Regional training programme delivered to all hiring managers (100+), providing knowledge on effective ‘inclusive selection’ techniques.

The Results

With the roll-out of the new recruitment process is in place, and managers fully trained, the transformation of Novus’s resourcing function is well underway. The team has made significant strides in:

Improving candidate quality

Reducing the time to hire

Progressing activities to deliver their D&I commitments

“Shout out to your team that are supporting us at the moment – we are a significantly better talent function as a result.” Matt Pitt, People Director, Novus
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