Steering talent instead of managing hires

Without a shared process, every request ran differently. Managers and agencies each worked from their own habits, which produced unequal terms, fragmented figures and little overview. Knowledge about providers, contracts and costs was scattered across separate files and with individual people, so every question about cost, quality or compliance became a search.

And whoever wanted to put it right had to ask the same people at once for a new process, a new system and a new way of working together. Precisely for that reason this could not be a one-off switch.

Three successive phases, each with a sharp goal of its own.

The first phase laid the foundation: transparency and control. SAP Fieldglass was introduced and configured, order, contract and invoicing processes were streamlined, terms with agencies were renegotiated, and up-to-date steering information became available for management. Guidance and training of everyone involved ran along from the start.

The second phase shifted attention to quality and cost: rates according to one agreements framework, steering on the performance of providers and rationalisation of the provider base, a broker model, monitoring compliance and advice on new legislation per country. What was saved here didn't come from spending less but from buying sharper.

The third phase broadened the scope: the same way of working now applied to every request, permanent and temporary, with one point of contact above that carried execution as an outsourced process, and an integrated approach to both. A fixed on-site team carried daily execution, compliance and advisory.

The moment when the organisation started thinking in terms of talent instead of hiring. The boundary between permanent and flexible was no longer determined by the contract, but by the value and the place of the work in the whole. From then on, decisions were taken per segment of the workforce instead of per assignment, and the collaboration became strategic instead of transactional.

A structural cost saving, confirmed year after year, together with better candidates, shorter lead times and more satisfied managers and providers. More important still was the system effect: a few partners instead of many providers, with one point of contact above, one way of working for permanent and temporary work instead of two separate circuits, and one conversation about the entire talent landscape instead of isolated hiring decisions.

The organisation thus got not only more grip, but a different way to think about talent. Improving became part of daily operations.

Scalability doesn't emerge by designing the perfect solution in one go, but by working in phases that each solve the problem the previous one made visible. The first phase made transparent what was hidden. The second made manageable what had become transparent. The third made strategic what had become manageable.

Three principles explain why that worked. Measure from the first phase: steering information and a working system belonged to the foundation, not to a later phase, so that the value of every next phase could be substantiated. Stand operationally strong before you become strategic: only when requests, invoices and figures ran predictably did room emerge for the conversation about talent. And keep people alongside as a continuous stream: guidance and training were not a separate project but a fixed part of every phase, where a training session in the first phase became an improvement session in the second and a strategic conversation in the third.

In short: in a multi-year trajectory, the right order weighs more than the right final plan. Whoever makes every phase valuable in itself while at the same time building the capacity for the next, keeps results that last.