How we helped Greggs find the best ingredients Greggs
Service Line:
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
Client Testimonials
“We asked Penna Barkers to review the roles within retail in order to develop generic role profiles for Team Members and Shop Management and establish a set of competencies, having been impressed that the consultancy already had lots of expertise and experience in this area. From this work, they were able to generate over 30 bespoke multiple choice questions for candidates to complete on-line. We now have three sets of 10 situational ‘test’ questions on-line, which offers candidate the opportunity to understand the type of work they will be asked to do on a typical day. The whole application process takes about 30 minutes to complete. The pass rate shows us that we are eliminating approximately 50% of unsuitable Team Member applicants and 40% of Shop Management applicants, therefore eliminating the volume which has enabled our recruitment teams to manage the process and ‘candidate journey’ more effectively.”
Karen Walker, Resourcing Manager, Greggs Plc
