As I’m sure everyone has seen G4S has come under heavy scrutiny this last week after the government announced the deployment of 3,500 extra military personnel to cover the shortfall of security staff for the Olympics.I’d love to get some comments from people as to what this says about the recruitment industry and whether this will have any long term impact in the way contracts are won. Will we see more focus on the “ability to supply” element of bids and less on the price? Is all this negative attention bringing the industry into disrepute or is this just the reality for any recruiter taking on such a large recruitment project and only to be expected?
Obviously I’d love to get a comment from someone at G4S but I’m guessing right now they’ve got other things on their plates!
So, please let me know what you think.
I made contact by email with G4S in Feb this year and again earlier this month offering them my database of c500 SIA registered security staff – all ex military, No Response – see email below
My Search firm – FieldSearch has developed a new brand covering all levels of security from static guards to very high level close protection,
we have a large (c500) database of experienced, qualified staff ready to be deployed anywhere in the World, all SIA Licensed.
Most of our candidates (male and female) are ex Armed or Police Forces with experience in many varying environments.
Please feel free to pass this information on to any of your contacts who might be interested.
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Derek
I have heard stories on Twitter of other recruiters offering access to their databases. I don’t think we have a strong “fee split” culture in this country and partnerships like this are quite rare. Agencies do tend to battle on alone even when they can’t fulfil the client brief.
It’s simple lack of accountability and clear reponsibility. I suspect also in a cost driven firm their recruiters were the cheapest they could find. I heard of an ex Policeman who applied twice to G4S and didn’t get a reply. Sadly the culture of rudeness which says that it’s acceptable not to acknowledge applications is pervasive across the UK with major brand name employers amongst the worse offenders.
The G4S debarcle *should* teach procurement & other megalomaniac committees that service delivery is more important than outright price, but it’s unlikely to have any impact, and more likely just cause the same megalomaniacs to be even more power hungry and decry any third-party organisation as incompetant. It is farcical that with many contracts, recruitment included, prices demanded are unsustainable and will lead to certain failure in both standards and service. The contract awarding department then decry the loss of quality – yet when quality is presented to them, they immediately re-focus on cost and lose sight of anything else.
Gary
Totally agree that price is nearly always disappointingly the focus. I’m wondering how some of the agencies who lost out to G4S feel now? Annoyed that they could have delivered or possibly relieved that they lost the contract?!
The hungry will always lament the missed opportunity to deliver, however with the requirements having gone from 2,000-10,000 in a little over 6 months, the smarter ones will see that missed opportunity coming from working as a consortia and sharing the spoils. Lessons to be learned by Govt commitees too?
Have just come across this blog post from andsomepople: http://andsomepeople.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/recruitment-doesnt-stop-at-attraction/ talking about how recruitment is the entire application journey from attraction to onboarding (and beyond).
I think it is terribly sad that, in a period of high unemployment in this country, the tax payer is now not only indirectly paying G4S’ bill for failure but also for the forces to step in and recover the fiasco. To me, it is typical of the “all or nothing” attitude of today’s business world. Such a large contract should have been split into smaller parts and apportioned to SME’s who would not only have been grateful of the business but would have taken responsibility for actually delivering on the expectations. The pricing would have been a lot more realistic too! Of course, it is easy to sit on the sidelines and shout recriminations but I do hope there is a lesson to learn here for not only government, but for the wider business population too.
It would have been great to see the project shared out but I wonder if splitting the contract into smaller parts would have been too much of a perceived “management” headache.
It is arguable whether a “one off” requirement such as this should have been placed with a single entity such as G4S. The requirement, on the face of it, was so obviously onerous in terms of starting from scratch i.e. setting up the systems, finding compliant staff and then deploying them, that the associated risks should have made the Government pursue a multi-vendor approach. The fact that they did not, demonstrates shortcomings in their understanding of the needs, risks, costs etc. A more successful and lower risk strategy would have been to use a supply chain of smaller established organisations such as the one owned by Derek FIeld. These organisations already have a track record, have compliant staff and understand the needs of the requirement. There would be no set up cost i.e. “Management Fee” of £56M when using their staff who already have the training and experince that is second to none. A multi-vendor approach also encourages better quality of supply and service through competition between participating organisations who want their business to be the best. Where is the competition and onus on a single source supplier such as G4S to do the best that they can? Their only motivation is to make money on behalf of themselve and their shareholders and so inherent in this approach is poor service and increased cost! We see this not only in the case of G4S but also with large plc organisations working on public sector contracts within NHS, defence etc. We have seen that handing absolute power to these organisations results in the taking of huge management fees, price fixing and other activities that are either borderline or overstep the ethical boundaries. The government preference to outsource to one or just a handful of organisations means bad news for smaller businesses, bad news for the UK tax payer and bad news in terms of value for money. The good news is that in the last one to two years, there are signs of the realisation that the single source approach is bad in many ways!
Typical government procurement at its worst as usual. 3 Prices for everything purchased is what i was always taught. In this case i don’t think so!!!!!
The contract should have been split between 10 smaller companies and may the best supplier get the biggest numbers. The answer given by government procurement to this would be that it would be ‘to hard to handle with 10 suppliers’, Rubbish, if set up correctly with the same criteria for all, if you have one fall down among the suppliers the others pick up the slack. The main problem with all these Government tenders is that no one in Government/civil service wants to take responsibility for any thing, except their pension!!!!!
There is a very nasty taste about this with G4s getting the whole contract and with such large fees 56million. Most tenders that i have completed the absolute be all and end all is money…. “AWR makes all to expensive so we have decided not to take in so many temps”..government department. They will say they consider quality but we all know that to be untrue.
I think you are absolutely right about the incredibly large fee. Especially when you consider the low wages the actual workers are being paid. Much has been said about this!