Case Study

How Clancy increased direct applications and reduced costs with Peoplebank

Clancy is one of the largest privately-owned construction firms in the UK, with over sixty years’ experience and a workforce of over 2,200. They have worked hard to develop a reputation as a well-run business that can be trusted to deliver value for money and essential services for their clients, who include brands such as Anglian Water, UK Power Networks, Thames Water, Southern Water and Northern Powergrid.

An important part of the service Clancy provides to its customers is giving them a direct workforce, rather than using subcontractors.

Phillipa Butson is Clancy’s Resourcing Manager, heading up the recruitment function across the UK.

Phillipa and her team are responsible for a significant number of new hires for this growing business each year, and the roles are hugely diverse from qualified water and power operatives, frontline supervisors to quantity surveyors, contract managers, HR, Bid Management, Procurement, Finance, IT etc.

The challenge

When Phillipa joined Clancy in 2018, the company wasn’t using an Applicant Tracking System. The vacancies were managed via a spreadsheet, Outlook folders, and shared drive folders, which meant duplicate information being stored in numerous places.

In addition to this, the recruitment team were spending an inordinate amount of time posting adverts one at a time, across various job boards and candidates were unable to apply through the Clancy website resulting in very few direct applications.

Responses to advertisements came into a shared email account, making it difficult to keep track of what stage applications were at, and that all candidates had received the correct and timely response. The process from start to finish was onerous, stressful and time consuming, and left the team little opportunity to add real value.

The solution

Phillipa knew that Clancy needed an ATS, so she researched different systems and asked her team to attend the In-House Recruitment Expo in February 2019, to talk to several ATS providers who were at the event.

The Clancy Recruiters warmed to the Peoplebank team, they particularly liked that support would be based in the UK and the system would be custom built to meet their needs.

• the Authorisation to Recruit (ATR) process: Clancy has a complex authority matrix which they’d need to build into the ATS and they felt Peoplebank’s configurability was best placed to manage this requirement.
• liking what Peoplebank had to say. They knew they’d be able to work well with the team and the customer service would be excellent.

While working with the team to set up the system, it became clear that having a Peoplebank built careers site, fully integrated with the ATS would maximise the benefit to the business.

Phillipa, along with Clancy’s Head of Communications, worked closely with Peoplebank to create a careers site that reflected their business values, how they work and the diverse backgrounds of their employees.

“The customer service and the collaboration to make it work has been great. There’s a strong sense that our Account Manager really wants our system to be as successful as possible.”

The careers site, combined with the ATS, has improved the entire recruitment process for the team, hiring managers and candidates. It has increased the recruiters’ productivity allowing them time for ‘value add’ activities that include interview support, proactive sourcing and building training resources for the hiring manager community.

If any candidates have questions about the status of their application, it’s easy to check and all CVs are stored GDPR compliantly. In addition to this all vacancies have a clear audit trail.

“When I was completing the User Acceptance Testing on the system, I was unbelievably happy at the amount of admin it cut out and once I got to use the live system, it was so easy to reply to candidates advising them of their application status, in fact we received a number of responses thanking us for replying so quickly, even if they weren’t being taken through to the next stage. I was able to do the job the way I thought it should be done - which felt great.”

Due to a delay with Covid, Clancy are now rolling out the system to 100+ hiring manager community.

“We've only been using half the system’s capabilities and it's been positively life-changing. It's revolutionised what we do.”

The results

Clancy’s placements continue to be made through a variety of sources, however, the careers page has most certainly contributed to a significant increase in direct hires and a reduction in recruitment agency fees.

Clancy saves the annual Peoplebank licence cost in agency fees every single month.

They’re seeing multiple benefits across the business. It allows Phillipa’s team to have a much more consultative approach with the hiring managers and show them what’s going on behind the scenes. They can talk the hiring managers through the process on a video call – showing the ads, the stats, the clicks, the applicants and who’s been shortlisted. Then it’s easy to send over links to the shortlist and the CVs.

Phillipa is looking forward to working closely with her Account Manager Andrew McDougall to delve into their analytics. She’s especially keen to examine the D&I data to gain further understanding of how candidates are performing at each stage of the recruitment process. Clancy now has a careers site which should appeal to different demographics and they want to make sure this continues throughout the candidate journey.

When asked about her favourite element of the system, Phillipa is most pleased with how easy it is for her and her team to review applications and shortlist. It’s a neat process which makes it easy to communicate with candidates.

Every candidate gets a response that can be scheduled to go at a sensible time, which has helped to improve the candidate journey. She also values having her own templates in the system and being able to alter them quickly when needed. Using the Peoplebank ATS has revolutionised the way they work,

“I would recommend Peoplebank. It's great value for money and has been an excellent return on investment. The Peoplebank team know their stuff and everyone I've spoken to in the business has been incredibly accommodating and patient.”