Case Study 1 – Provision of HR mentoring results in recruitment savings of $55,000 and reduction of employee turnover by 60%

The Challenge

A boutique 5-star resort sought to reduce its reliance and expense on recruitment agency services. The resort had traditionally relied on agencies to source experienced candidates from the global hospitality pool and assistance was sought to design an in-house alternative to attract, recruit and retain talent.

The Analysis

The resort’s traditional option of utilising recruitment agencies for the majority of vacancies was costing the business approximately $70,000 per year. Employee turnover was running at over 90% for the same period. It was identified the resort’s HR professional did not have adequate experience to set up a functional in-house recruitment function and design a strategy to combat high employee turnover.

The Action Plan

• Design of an employment application page for the company website
• Introduced an Employee Referral Scheme for current employees to nominate qualified candidates
• Designed and delivered a Supervisory/Management training and development program focusing on employee engagement and retention of employees
• Set up domestic and international online job boards to capture suitably qualified hospitality candidates
• Provided training and ongoing mentoring to the resort’s HR professional in key elements of the employment cycle: Attract, Recruit, Retain and Engage

The Positive Outcome

At the end of a 12-month period, the in-house HR professional had the competence to attend to all line and managerial level recruitment and utilised agencies for only 2 position vacancies over the period. The resort’s agency spend decreased from $70,000 to $15,000, representing a 78% improvement. After running quarterly sessions of the Engagement and Retention training program, employee turnover reduced from over 90% to 36% against a local industry average of over 50%.