Interserve FM is a world leading international support services and construction company. Recently acquired by MITIE, the company provides a wide range of advice, design, construction, equipment, facilities management, and frontline services to more than 7,500 public and private sector clients. Carbon60 is proud to have maintained its relationship with Interserve FM despite the change in ownership.
As a company providing a broad range of services to a variety of organisations, Interserve FM was well practised in successfully juggling lots of different client needs. However, to strengthen its offerings further, Interserve FM chose to take on a recruitment partner.
Realising the value of working with recruitment specialists, Interserve FM appointed Carbon60 to assist. This followed an existing long working relationship with the Impellam Group, our sister companies Guidant and Blue Arrow, both having worked with our client before.
Some of the largest contracts for which they required support included the East Thames Housing Group in 2018 and more recently The London Ambulance Service in 2020. Interserve FM also had plans to create a ‘Centre of Excellence’ and Carbon60 was pleased to be able to assist with each of these projects. Here’s more on how we helped Interserve FM to realise their recruitment goals:
The East Thames Housing Group
The East Thames Housing Group specifically required high volumes of staff including Gas Engineers, Labourers, Planners, Surveyors and Operational Managers. These roles were essential for supporting planned and responsive maintenance, estate services, cyclical works, refurbishment, and voids covering 13,500 households and corporate buildings.
We were pleased to be awarded Master Vendor status for the provision of all temporary workers across Hard FM, technical/engineering, site services & trades and professionals. The award came after several years of us being a preferred supplier.
We worked closely with Interserve FM’s community of hiring managers to ensure frequent engagement, regular site visits and promotion of the contract. Our solution included fixed agency fees, single invoicing, and full visibility of spend - all of which provided our client with a more simple, efficient, and transparent service.
Our deep understanding of both recruitment and our client’s needs resulted in us supplying in excess of 300 workers a day (at a peak) for the East Thames Housing Group. This activity culminated in a revenue of more than £10m per annum and to date, we have managed over 1.5m hours of timesheets across 300+ projects.
This success has led to an annual cost saving of circa 7% - the result of rate reduction and annual rebates. We estimate that our process efficiencies have brought about a reduced ‘time to hire’ which has saved an additional 2% for our client.
The London Ambulance Service
For The London Ambulance Service contract, increased assistance was required during the COVID-19 pandemic. A surge of more than 11,000 daily calls was being received in April 2020 - that equated to a rise of 40% on typical monthly call volumes. Cleaning requirements also intensified due to suspected COVID-19 cases being transported via the ambulance service to hospitals (including Nightingale hospitals) during that time.
To support this, Carbon60 pulled together a team in a short timescale to provide 24/7 assistance on sourcing and hiring a broad range of roles. We managed to do this by mobilising five key recruiters from other projects to carry out the screening/vetting, video interviewing and subsequent onboarding of the most suitable candidates. The team worked on a shift basis to ensure we met Interserve FM’s tight deadlines.
This initiative resulted in us filling 170 roles within our first week on this project. 112 hires started on the Easter Bank holiday weekend and at the peak, we had a workforce of 343 individuals in place to help with the COVID-19 emergency efforts.
We generated 500 candidates during week one, by launching the Key Work Network - a scheme to help those looking for work (and in particular, furloughed workers) from other sectors to find roles to support during the crisis. A large proportion of people who found work through this program have gone on to become permanent staff members on the project they were placed.
Centre of Excellence
As well as large and critical contracts such as the above, Interserve FM wanted to set up a ‘Centre of Excellence’ which would provide support to new contracts. It was to include the arranging of security clearance for work related to the MOD and Home Office buildings.
For this project, we found the relevant skillset required for each role and sought all relevant clearances. We further managed travel and accommodation bookings on behalf of Interserve FM.
Carbon60 also provided up to 20 surveyors who provided support on buildings from MOD bases to Nuclear Decommissioning Authority sites in locations from Anglesey to Somerset. Our invaluable assistance in providing security clearances, and prescreening/vetting services ensured that everything was completed on time and the project was completed successfully.
For each of the contracts listed above we used our range of innovative talent attraction methods and vast experience in vetting and onboarding to work quickly and efficiently to meet the tight timescales of each project for our client.
Providing much more than a standard recruitment service, we have been able to work with Interserve as a true partner for over 12 years now. Acting as subject matter experts with an in-depth understanding of lots of different elements of their business, we have acted as consultants on numerous areas of their business and workforce-related activity.
