Manpower - Employers - Case Studies

How a government department increased productivity and reduced staff costs.

The challenge

A government department offered Manpower the opportunity to tender for the management of its secretarial and typing service. Previously, this had been run in-house, but the Newcastle-based department was attempting to reduce costs.

As Manpower proposed it would cut the number of staff by more than half - from sixty-five to twenty-seven - whilst also improving productivity and quality service levels, it was not surprising the department opted for Manpower's Newcastle branch to handle the contract.

The solution

Manpower knew that recruiting the right staff and providing them with the necessary training was key to the success of the contract.

All staff received Manpower Skillware training - a programme which includes the world's most effective training for word-processing, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, e-mail and the Internet - as well as Qualitiplus training, which teaches good customer service command.

"Our commitment was to continuously improve employees' skills," explains Jane Ennis of Manpower's Newcastle branch. "We also introduced a much more customer focused environment, where all typists were encouraged to answer phones professionally and develop a relationship with customers."

The benefits

The excellent results of Manpower's initiatives speak for themselves. These include:
  • A 66% reduction of staff salary bills - a saving of £½ million per year for the department.

  • Despite the significant reduction in staff, productivity was increased by as much as 30%. Manpower introduced staff pay rises linked with individual productivity.

  • The accuracy target of 98% was consistently exceeded, with a 99.6% achievement every month.

  • Throughout the duration of a three-year contract period, Manpower retained 97% of staff.

  • Supervisors were encouraged to do service evaluation reviews with the main customer users, to look at how the service could be continually improved.

  • Manpower immediately achieved a deadline of a two hour turnaround for all work (compared with the previous average of forty-eight hours).

"Our emphasis was on fast production of accurate, quality work," says Jane. "We created a highly professional and productive working environment, where staff took pride in their work and were focused on customer satisfaction."

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