Winning Secrets: How process re-design helped Nala Employment cut recruitment cycle time by 20%

Jim Wee, Director of Nala Employment reveals how the implementation of their new CRM System as part of the business process re-design initiative has helped meet the expectations of both clients and talent in the marketplace.

Nala Employment has managed to deliver exemplary value and quantifiable results while continuously impressing their prospective and existing clients. This is evident in their gold win for the Best New Recruitment Firm category at the Asia Recruitment Awards 2020, Singapore virtual awards ceremony.

Jim Wee, Director of Nala Employment, shares four key objectives of his business strategy that has undoubtedly helped drive business productivity and efficiency, in this interview with Priya Veeriah. 

Q What is your organisation’s recruitment strategy, and how has it evolved in recent times? How does this agenda fit into the bigger HR priorities, and do you work closely with the CEO for this?

We launched our business process re-design initiative (BPR), with the following objectives:

• To redesign core processes, using information technology to optimise efficiency and achieve zero-waste in capacity;
• To reorganise teams with end-to-end responsibilities;
• To educe operating costs and cycle times; and
• To refocus the company values on customer needs.

Q Share with us your winning recruitment strategy. What were the key business drivers behind this strategy?

From experience, we learned that our clients’ time is precious. They want to get talent within a short period of time. We had been facing challenges in attracting talented workforce because our existing business process is not efficient enough. When our business processes are efficient enough, we will be able to find sufficient relevant talent and career opportunities, giving both the talent and employers abundant options within a short time.

For our BPR initiative, we wanted to do the right thing beginning with the first time and to follow suit every other time. Our BPR initiative has the following objectives:

We want to redesign core processes, using information technology to optimise efficiency and achieve zero-waste in capacity. Modern information technology such as WeChat, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Facebook are effective tools to communicate with the workforce as well as within internal teams. These technologies can be incorporated into our teams and help us to achieve optimum performance.

We want to reorganise teams with end-to-end responsibilities to achieve zero-waste in capacity. End-to-end responsibilities hold our teams accountable on their tasks. Each task will be completed on time before being passed on to the next team. This allows us to achieve zero-waste performance.

We want to reduce operating costs and cycle times to optimise efficiency. We want to save time and money without compromising on the value we deliver.

We want to focus company values on customer needs of maximise client satisfaction. Our business is successful when both the workforce and employer clients are satisfied by our services.

Q In what shape or form did you experience challenges, and how did you overcome them?

While implementing our BPR initiative, we wanted to do the right things from the start and every other time. To achieve that, we redesigned our business processes by achieving end-to-end responsibilities, optimum efficiency, zero-waste in capacity. After internal trainings, our dedicated teams became highly focused on their end-to-end responsibilities. This reduced our cycle time by 20%.

Q On to the most important part – results! How did you measure the ROI or milestones of this initiative?

After implementing our new CRM system, we were able to:

1. Enhance customer satisfaction and retention. This allows us to maintain our good reputation in the marketplace and enable continued growth.
2. Increase value from our existing customers and reduce cost associated with supporting and servicing them. It also increased our overall efficiency and reduced total cost of sales.
3. Improve profitability by focusing on the most active customers and dealing with the non-active in more cost effective ways.
4. Our business started to look after our existing customers effectively. We were able to concentrate on finding new customers and expanding our market and business. The more we know about our customers, the easier it was for us to identify new prospects and increase our customer base.
5. Initially we were using the traditional method to source for job seekers which required at least an hour to source for one candidate. With this system, we can auto generate one new applicant within a second.
6. Reduce our manpower cost and time consumed. Our successful placement increased in 2019 in comparison to 2018.

Q Going forward, what are some key considerations to note when it comes to recruiting talent?

Our BPR initiative is unique because we want to achieve end-to-end responsibilities, optimum efficiency, zero-waste in capacity. This will enable us to achieve both the speed and quality of career placement.

Previously, while we wanted to look for a candidate as soon as possible, there was always an urge to get the best talent possible, which usually takes time. According to an IBM research, HR leaders and hiring managers would rehire only 61% of their recent hires on average. This means that most of the ‘talent’ identified are not up to the employers’ standards.

We face the challenge of attracting a talented workforce because our existing business process is not efficient enough. In order to attract the talented workforce, we must achieve end-to-end responsibilities, optimum efficiency, and zero-waste in capacity. When our business processes are efficient enough, we will be able to find sufficient relevant talents and career opportunities, giving both the talents and employers abundant options.

Photo / 123RF

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