RedLaw

RedLaw is an independent executive search consultancy specialising in working with private practice legal professionals in the UK, the US and internationally.

  • With only 15 employees (10 fee earners), RedLaw has made an enormous, long-term impact on the legal sector, with notable successes in the highly competitive London private practice legal sector.
  • In January 2019, RedLaw launched a German desk with the appointment of a German-born recruiter to service the lucrative recruitment market and add value to clients. As German lawyers are very particular, it was essential to have a native, German-speaking consultant heading the division to earn the trust of candidates and clients.
  • RedLaw offers personal Career Pathway Programmes in line with each employee’s aims, as well as agile and part-time working opportunities for all, training, mentoring and the latest recruitment tools.
  • The judges liked that RedLaw aims to enhance the reputation of legal recruiters and position law as a sector not only focused on money, but caring about social enterprise and giving back. As a company, RedLaw fund-raises for organisations and charities linked to the legal industry, and is proud to be a member of the Association of Asian Woman Lawyers Society and work with the Black Solicitors’ Network.

Judges’ comments: “RedLaw is a consistent and innovative business who focus on quality – not just on results. It is a well-rounded recruitment business that puts employees first and understands the importance of CSR.”

Also: The judges felt the shortlist was very competitive, making it difficult to make a final decision.

Signify Technology

Last year’s winner of the 2019 Recruiter Awards Best New Agency, Signify is a bespoke technology recruitment agency, exclusively serving the Scala programming community.

  • Signify demonstrates its true commitment to improving the reputation of the recruitment industry, proving that a company can be ethical and live by customer service, and still yield incredible results. It managed to exceed all its targets, including 100% team growth, bring in improved revenue (growing 112% in sales) and expand globally (opening its first office in the US).
  • The judges were impressed with the zeal of Signify, where there was a culture of enthusiasm and pride in the recruitment industry, leading to building a business model based on customer service, placing candidates’ and clients’ happiness at the heart of its success. To prove these aren’t just words, Signify has got rid of KPIs in favour of customer service scores, putting them throughout its promotions and pay rise structure.
  • If consultants want to progress or earn more, they have to pass knowledge through the business, upskilling new recruiters and sharing lessons and challenges. They also have to show a dedication to community, whether that’s the Scala community or serving the local community through charity and outreach programmes.
  • A strong category. It was nice to see so many small businesses championing for positive change for their industries. Many submissions were punching above their weight with stories of investment and growth.

Judges’ comments: “Signify’s story was the most heartfelt and honest, weighting ethics and great service over just billings. They’re in a niche, they know who they are, and they’re sticking to it.”

Also: A strong category. It was nice to see so many small businesses championing for positive change for their industries. Many submissions were punching above their weight with stories of investment and growth.

Green Park

Green Park offers executive search, interim management, board advisory, diversity & inclusion and managed service people solutions across the private, public and third sectors.

  • Increased income per head by a whopping 600%, from £1,393 in 2018 to £9,837 in 2019, and at the same time reduced the average number of days taken to complete an executive search placement from 169 days in 2018 to 128 days in 2019, a 32% decrease.
  • Green Park’s 2019 strategy launched five new core values – courage, rigour, empathy, energy and diversity – chosen by the employees and rolled out with a series of events, games and interactive activities.
  • Green Park has always advocated for ethical, inclusive, fair and transparent recruitment practices. It runs an independent diversity search parallel to all executive mandates, providing clients with greater candidate choice through wide-reaching and diverse talent pools.
  • Green Park was one of 14 executive search firms that qualified under the government-backed Hampton-Alexander Enhanced Code of Conduct, helping boards achieve gender balance.
  • Green Park developed an employee wellness app, providing informative wellness-related content, a personal wellbeing profile tracker and an appointment booker to speak with qualified mental health professionals.

Judges’ comments: “A stand-out winner based upon every example provided feeding back to their core focus of being a true partner of talent for diversity & inclusion. From delivering regular thought leadership reports on diversity within the FTSE 100, and being a government adviser on this topic, Green Park is raising the professional image of recruitment in a way which benefits us all.”

Also: A highly competitive category with an impressive range of applications from some companies making a huge difference and leading the recruitment sector forward.

 

Investigo

Investigo specialises in audit, business change and transformation, compliance, BI and data analytics, human resources and talent management, pharmaceutical and life sciences, procurement, property, FM and workplace, risk, SAP, strategy and technology recruitment.

  • The judges felt Investigo fully invested into the future of both its people and culture, and was without question a worthy winner of the category.
  • An environment where everyone brings their true self to work, strengthening team bonds and helping Investigo people to outperform their competitors.
  • Investigo’s turnover was £140m, a 22% increase from 2018’s turnover of £115m, which made 2019 the company’s 14th consecutive year of growth –not only in profits but also specialisms, headcount and market share.
  • Investigo’s aim is to continually strive towards providing the best diversity & inclusion advice and support to both clients and candidates. In 2019, this included hosting three D&I events, publishing three D&I Insight magazines, producing a D&I guide to support and guide Investigo clients to ensure inclusive recruitment processes and launching Investigo Pride.

Judges’ comments: “While significantly increasing both turnover and profit, Investigo has benefitted from amazing values-led leadership. They’ve taken D&I insight, social responsibility and belonging to achieve brilliant outcomes to a new level.”

ERSG

Established in 2008, ersg is dedicated to the energy sector, specialising in clean energy, power generation, subsea and marine engineering.

  • ersg understands that a compliant business is more than a box-ticking exercise. The directors have made compliance part of the everyday routine throughout all departments and global offices in the company.
  • ersg places seafarer contractors onboard vessels, and keeps a log with every seafarer placement and records information such as daily rates, name of the vessel they are working on, the flag of the country they are working in and the type of vessel they are working on.
  • Seafarers’ placements and processes are audited every five years by the Maritime & Coastguard Agency, an executive agency of the UK.
  • Whenever the government communicates on important regulatory changes, ersg’s compliance team, led by the global head of legal and compliance, will ensure that everyone in ersg understands and implements the new changes.
  • Recruitment consultants are regularly trained and updated on the latest regulatory requirements, and regular compliance audits are built in to managers’ weekly or monthly routines.

Judges’ comments: “ERSG demonstrated that they were elevating the role of compliance within recruitment, putting it front and centre within their complex market. While all entries were impressive in their approach, ERSG stood out for ensuring everyone within the company has compliance in mind – not just for the support operation.”

ResourceBank Recruitment

Established in 1995, ResourceBank is a provider of bespoke outsourced recruitment, talent and HR services to organisations throughout the UK and Europe.

  • Excellent customer service, together with efficiencies and cost-savings led to all new 2019 clients being won through recommendation. And at the same time, ResourceBank has maintained its long-standing relationships with clients – in some cases over 15 years.
  • ResourceBank is trusted to deliver RPO in sectors that are new to the company, such as new clients within Legal and Dentistry, despite having no previous sector knowledge. As a result, ResourceBank has now been recommended to others in those sectors.
  • In an impressive year, ResourceBank has had the highest-ever number of vacancies recruited (5,284) – an increase of 15% on 2018, the largest number of client RPO partnership agreements (16 separate RPOs in 2019, up from 12 in 2018) and the largest number (six) of new client RPO agreements established in the year.
  • The judges were impressed with the approach to the video-screening campaign for one of its long-standing clients, World Duty Free, which was looking to recruit large numbers of customer service staff to support its peaks. The new HireVue video applications introduced by ResourceBank reduced assessment time by 75% and improved candidate engagement.

Judges’ comments: “The judges were struck by how partnership-orientated they are. They are so much more than just recruiting – involving the candidate and truly understanding clients and implementing bespoke processes that work.”

 

cube19

Recruitment analytics and sales gamification platform cube19’s philosophy is to optimise the two greatest assets of every recruitment agency: their people and their data.

  • cube19 provided a technology widely used by the sector with a large amount of new sign-ups, customer retention and even returning customers.
  • cube19 grew revenue by 32%, despite the economic uncertainty caused by Brexit. During the awarding period, over 80 new clients signed up, plus the company experienced 12 returning customers, eight major product releases, increased staff headcount by 100% and introduced an innovation to the global staffing market – Actionable Insights.
  • cube19 gives recruiters the platform to grow revenue and forge stronger customer relationships through the power of data and Actionable Insights.
  • Using cube19’s technology provides a vantage point for leadership to oversee the activity, performance and direction of their company. CEOs can drill into any company performance metric, unlock revenue opportunities, mitigate risks and prioritise work in real-time, on any device.
  • As data is at the heart of cube19’s DNA, the judges were impressed with how the firm keeps track of how its technology outperforms the industry benchmarks in terms of support and service. In particular, over 99% CSAT (customer satisfaction score) for the last three years – more than 3% higher than the industry high.

Judges’ comments: “A company with an impressive customer satisfaction rating of 99% that has shown a continued investment in product development and learning about the adoption of the technology within the customer environment.”

Also: The judges felt that this category demonstrated a strong roster of submissions, with exceptional innovation to assist the sector, showing clear examples of return on investment (ROI) for the industry.

 

 

 

 

 

Ant Middleton 24 Hour Live Challenge – The AA in partnership with PeopleScout

Motoring breakdown organisation the AA needed to attract a new audience and dispel the misconception that the only roles on offer were for roadside breakdown mechanics. So the AA, with PeopleScout, turned employer branding into live entertainment.

  • In line with AA staff living the organisation’s values and proving they were ready for anything, ex-Special Forces soldier Ant Middleton would test six AA employees physically, mentally and creatively through a series of wilderness challenges in a live 24-hour event, where the public would choose the intensity of the next challenge to be inflicted on them. The brave team would be awarded points not just for how well they completed the tasks, but how well they lived the AA values – dynamism, collaboration, expertise and care.
  • There was no one more suited to the task, the brand or the campaign’s message than celebrity host Ant Middleton, who as a former member of the Special Boat Service embodies teamwork, expertise, dynamism and expecting the unexpected. His presence boosted the AA’s campaign profile before, during and after the event.
  • With employer brand ‘Ready for ANYTHING’, the challenge was bound to throw up unexpected human challenges, including a contestant’s wife who went into pre-labour on the first day of the event, and in true AA style, he still managed to complete the event while she cheered him on from the hospital!
  • The results were far beyond anything the AA had achieved previously: the average dwell time on the live event was 19.5 minutes, versus 4 secs for a regular social post; 38,000 engagements on Instagram, 2.3 million views on YouTube; 230,000 visits to the AA’s careers site over the 24 hours; and all applications were up (apprenticeships +193%, roadside +143%, contact centre +230% and head office +228%).

Judges’ comments: “This was a clearly innovative campaign, which particularly impressed due to its multi-channel approach and focus on end results.”

 

 

SThree

STEM staffing specialist SThree’s business model is aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which influences its company Sustainability Strategy.

  • SThree’s Sustainability Strategy has three goals: reducing absolute carbon emissions by 10% by 2025; supporting community projects that engage and inspire 200 people from diverse backgrounds to access STEM education, training and careers; empowering colleagues to use their time and skills to strengthen their community through 1,500 volunteering hours.
  • SThree carried out a number of initiatives to reduce carbon emissions, including implementing new recycling stations with signage to help improve waste management, launching a six-week travel campaign on World Environment Day, challenging the travel decisions of colleagues (airmiles were reduced by 5% as a result) and as part of the Global Climate Strike its network of 110 CSR Champions put on events in 28 locations including recycling races and volunteering at litter picks (over 194 volunteering hours).
  • In 2019, the SThree Foundation partnered with 10 STEM organisations in key markets that deliver STEM education, training and career programmes to people from diverse backgrounds. As a result, 51 African girls from low-income backgrounds are at university studying STEM subjects; seven ASA students have secured Eduspot grants and built education resources in their community to support access to quality education; more people from diverse backgrounds are engaged in or considering STEM education or careers as a result of SThree’s intervention.
  • Each staff member has 16 hours of paid volunteering leave every year, enabling them to strengthen their local community through skill sharing and contributing time. Against a target of 1,500 hours in 2019, staff volunteered 2,495 hours in their local communities.

Judges’ comments: “Strong mature considerations of impact with strong social engagement and demonstrable solutions. Aligning to SDG demonstrates significant desire to embed sustainability throughout business.”

 

Ryan Adams: Founder, Signify Technology

The judges said Ryan Adams, founder of tech recruitment company Signify Technology, was a great entrant, demonstrating his real focus on people first.

  • One of his inspiring initiatives was setting up the Signify Health League Table, where the team were encouraged to take part in living healthier by exercising, eating well and mindfulness and increasing their awareness of mental health.
  • Ryan completed Tough Mudder London in May 2019 alongside seven of the Signify team, bringing his team together and supporting a charity close to his heart, St. Christopher’s Hospice in South-East London, where his granddad was cared for and passed away. Signify donated £3k to the charity, £1k from Ryan personally.
  • One reason staff find Ryan such an inspiring leader is his commitment to the entire picture, always placing importance and care on every aspect of the business. There’s no part of the business, or someone’s role, that is insignificant to him, and he actively seeks every person’s opinion and input.
  • Ryan organises regular one-on-one sessions with every member of the business, providing the opportunity to talk about their individual challenges and goals. Through these meetings, he has been able to help colleagues who are going through tough times in their lives.
  • Among many other initiatives, Ryan set up Scala in the City, an event run by Signify that brings the best and most respected programme language Scala professionals to the engineers who need them the most.
  • Ryan believes in the importance of diversity and that the industry can be better because of it, and so he’s created a diverse and empowered workforce for Signify.

Judges’ comments: “His personality and drive is infectious with a core eye on keeping his business culture consistent during early stages of growth, and for the next phase to come. He was clearly enthused by his market focus, with a real appetite for embedding himself and company more and more into this.”

Also: The judges said this category revealed a fantastic collection of recruitment leaders at a variety of stages of business maturity, showing how passionate and driven the leaders were.