How we helped Greggs find the best ingredients Greggs

Service Line:

Managed Recruitment and Assessment |

Greggs is the leading bakery retailer in the UK, with over 19,000 employees and more than 1400 shops nationwide. Although enjoying success, in 2009 it became clear that there were problems with both recruiting and retaining effective Team Members.

Greggs’ recruitment process for Team Members (i.e. Sales Assistants) was both time and resource intensive. What’s more, staff turnover was high (33-50%). Greggs believed this was partly due to unrealistic candidate expectations.

Penna’s challenge was to develop a quick, efficient and cost-effective process to recruit Team Members, which also provided a realistic view of the role.

Penna Resourcing Solution

We were introduced to Greggs by their agency, TCS. Our initial discussions told us that they were interested in exploring robust new on-line screening tools that would help them attract and select the right people.

We began by conducting a comprehensive analysis of the Team Member job, followed by the development of a competency framework, outlining the key skills and behaviours that Team Members would need. The next step was to design a Situational Judgement Test (SJT). A Situational Judgement Test presents candidates with a number of scenarios, each with four possible response options. It then asks candidates to identify the best and worst response in each case, which results in a total score. An SJT is a great way of automatically screening candidates, while providing them with a realistic job profile - thus increasing their engagement. The design process involved generating scenarios through discussions with key stakeholders. This discussion process sparked a requirement for another SJT to be designed for Shop Managers and Assistant Managers. We then went on to develop the SJT, pilot it with current Team Members and to implement it on-line. After setting an appropriate benchmark for potential recruits, both SJTs went live in September 2009.

Benefits

The SJTs screened out approximately 50% of Team Member candidates and 40% of Manager and Assistant Manager candidates. Critically, it significantly reduced the time line managers needed to spend on recruitment, by taking on the time-consuming task of sifting all the initial applications.

Summary

Greggs were very happy with the number of candidates screened out of the process and the reduction in screening time. Attrition has also been seen to stabilise. Hiring managers have provided much positive feedback on the process to Greggs’ internal recruitment team, helping to enhance their internal reputation.

Since September 2009, we have continued to build a strong relationship with Greggs in the recruitment space and are currently talking to them about solutions to additional recruitment challenges.

For more information please contact daryl.murray@penna.com