"It’s a partnership," says Bart Rovins, HR manager at Moen’s New Bern, North Carolina, final-assembly plant. "We view Adecco as a key part of our business strategy. The primary goal of the relationship is that Adecco does a better job recruiting than we can," he says. This goal is regularly evaluated and rated to ensure that the partnership continues to be profitable for both companies.

    On any given day, the New Bern facility has between 175 and 200 hourly temps, all of whom are provided by Adecco. The recruiting firm keeps two of its own full-time employees on-site at the plant to oversee all of the human resource issues for the temps, including benefits administration, training, and general performance management. The on-site people aren’t involved in recruiting, but focus solely on managing their temps, Rovins says. "If a company is big enough to have this many temporary employees, it should be able to leverage its recruiter relationship to require on-site management for them." Thanks to the on-site support, Rovins is able to have two fewer people on his own HR staff, which saves the company about $200,000 per year.

    Adecco provides the service and quality that Moen expects. Rovins meets regularly with the Adecco recruiters and on-site people. Once a quarter he reviews a series of metrics designed to rate Adecco on its performance, including time to recruit and turnover rate. If the Adecco team isn’t up to his standards, they brainstorm improvement activities. For example, in a recent effort to step up recruiting efforts, Rovins and the Adecco team made plans to host job fairs, provide radio ads, and increase their outdoor signage.

    Adecco and Moen have also built a unique full-time placement program called Adecco To Moen, which goes beyond the typical 90-day trial period. Every hourly person who gets hired at this plant begins as a temp and goes through the program.

    "It starts with Adecco’s recruiting activities," Rovins says. They have their own system of evaluation, and Moen added some steps to define specific competencies required for success at the plant. For example, employees should be team workers, require limited supervision, and be flexible and deadline oriented. "They need to be comfortable working in a high-pressure environment," he says.

    Once they are hired as temps, they receive points based on their performance, attendance, safety, and discipline. The on-site Adecco team keeps tabs on temps’ scores, and when they score high enough to be eligible for full-time employment, their names go into a pool of candidates. When Rovins needs to hire, he looks at the score reports provided by the on-site Adecco team and selects the top performers. "It takes the emotion out of the hiring process," he says. "Our choices are based entirely on the point system."

    It also weeds out weak performers and reduces turnover. Temps who don’t score well on the tests know that their chances of getting hired are remote, so they usually quit before their assignment is over, he says. As a result, since the program was implemented a year ago, turnover has dropped 10 percent, from 12.4 percent per month to 2.4 percent. While Rovins hesitates to attribute all of the reduction in turnover to the placement program, he feels it’s had a significant impact. "It’s reasonable to assume the program has helped us make better hiring decisions."

Workforce, July 2002, pp. 74-77 -- Subscribe Now!