HOW A CUSTOM BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK CREATED A £24M SAVINGS FOR A LEADING BRITISH BANK

HOW A CUSTOM BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK CREATED A £24M SAVINGS FOR A LEADING BRITISH BANK

PeopleScout’s talent advisory team created a new candidate assessment center for a large British bank, resulting in a 58% reduction in recruitment costs totalling £24M.

58 % Reduction in Recruitment Costs

resulting in a £24M savings

55 % Reduction in Attrition

in the first year

50 % Reduction in Application-to-Hire Ratio

from 32:1 to 16:1

SITUATION

Arriving at the right assessment solution for a complex, multi-billion-pound contemporary business is a major challenge. But, this was a challenge that PeopleScout’s team of psychologists was built for when our banking client came to us with a big brief. The banking group had just launched a crucial new set of values. They wanted us to create a custom behavioral assessment framework, along side a full suite of candidate assessment tools to support hiring into core customer-facing roles across the bank.

SOLUTION

We began by carrying out a comprehensive job analysis, involving focus groups with over 300 colleagues as well as one-on-one interviews with job incumbents, senior stakeholders and transformation stakeholders. We identified synergies and differences between role requirements and complexity across the financial services organization. The detailed research and analysis revealed three job families across all roles, each with four levels of complexity. We developed definitions and behavioral indicators for each group and each level in the framework.

Following sign-off on the new behavioral framework, we developed the assessment matrix and recommended key assessment methods. We streamlined and simplified the existing multi-stage process, bringing both the process and tools into alignment with the new values. This made it easy to understand and implement across the bank. We recommended a three-stage process across the framework, allowing for tailoring to job family and complexity levels, using specific skills assessments and assessment center micro-exercises.

RESULTS

We built-in various ways of measuring the cost-efficiencies and the overall return-on-investment of the end-to-end assessment solution. The client was delighted with the results:

  • A reduction in the classroom-based training time required as the calibre of candidates was improved.
  • Improved conversion at every stage of the assessment process, meaning less business time was required for assessment. The application-to-hire ratio was cut by half, from 32:1 to 16:1.
  • There was a 55% reduction in first-year attrition.
  • There was a 58% reduction in whole life recruitment cost, saving £24M.

AT A GLANCE

  • COMPANY: Leading UK bank
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Talent Advisory
  • ABOUT THE CLIENT: This client is a leading UK financial services group that includes several retail banking brand. The company has been partnering with PeopleScout for over 20 years, making it one of our longest-standing client relationships.