Private and Confidential - Milton Keynes · RECRUITMENT . Final Distribution . Head of HR (MKC) HR...

RECRUITMENT

Final Distribution

Head of HR (MKC)

HR SDM (Mouchel)

HR Manager, Resourcing (Mouchel)

HR Consultant (Mouchel)

Team Leader - Temporary Recruitment (Mouchel)

G Barlow – Interim Audit Manager M Patel – Auditor

L Whitten - Assistant Auditor

March 2010

MKC INTERNAL AUDIT SERVICE RECRUITMENT

AUDIT REPORT – E122/10 2 MARCH 2010

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

Staff is the Council’s most valuable and effective resource and clearly affects everything we aim to achieve from our statutory requirements to our local priorities. Therefore appointing the right candidate to the right position is of vital importance.

Replacing staff is a costly process. There is visible cash expenditure including advertising and pre-employment checks (eg Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) where appropriate) and less tangible or hidden costs such as: work not being done or being delayed or to a falling standard, other staff having to cover in the short term and the pressure this causes

them, significant officer time taken in reviewing applications, short listing,

interviewing, scoring and completing paperwork for appointment and chasing start times etc,

setting up the new employee with all the needed access, and the cost of the lead time whist they are on the learning curve of a new job.

So recruitment is of paramount importance to the Council and it is essential that we have effective recruitment processes.

Audit work was undertaken during the period 18th January 2010 to 17th February 2010 and testing covered appointments from September 2009 to December 2009.

This report covers the process between the point where recruitment is required and the right person takes up post. The purpose of this report is to give an account of how effective, efficient and economic the recruitment process is.

2 AUDIT OPINION

Satisfactory – Controls are considered adequate with some areas of weakness that are not major risk areas.

3 CONCLUSIONS

3.1 The work of the Recruitment team is improving.

3.2 This could be further improved by having a less bureaucratic system to enable managers to recruit the right person as effectively as possible. Internal audit have made some suggestions which we feel could be used as a starting point for the service to create a better work flow, which will be considered as part of any process re-engineering.

3.3 The time taken to recruit, from the resignation to appointment over a 3 month period can vary from 1 day to 1232 days. The 1232 days was due to the



organisation not being able to recruit a full time post due to changes within the way the service was being delivered to the community, temporary arrangements were put into place.

4 WAY FORWARD

4.1 All the Recommendations identified are included in the Management Action Plan (Page 5). However the key issue is set out below to provide a summary of those areas, which require management’s attention to focus upon.

4.2 There needs to be a fundamental cultural change in relation to recruitment around the Council. The concept of responsibility accounting involves managers delivering their service to the required standard whilst managing the costs that are within their control. This is not advocating an uncontrolled free-for-all, but is about restoring the correct balance in order to allow managers to manage their own risks. For the exceptions where this authority and flexibility is misused and abused, this should be dealt with under the capability and disciplinary procedures.

4.3 Recruitment needs to become a more supportive and customer focussed for the Service Managers to help them achieve their objectives and be more pro-active in helping the Authority to address wider issues such as high staff turnover, the use of temporary/agency staff and the use of consultants. In doing so ensuring that the corporate objectives are aligned.

4.4 This change in culture will need to be supported by HR including provision of online guidance, templates, provision of training and in certain cases one to one guidance or bespoke training as required. Please see flows at the end of the report.



FINDINGS SUMMARY

5 FINDINGS

5.1 Process

5.1.1 41 cases sampled to verify that the key controls were in place. 5 of the 41 files were either fast track or dealt with by another team.

5.1.2 Audit testing highlighted issues with a lack of appropriate documentation i.e.:-

No evidence was available for all cases that the Head of Service (HoS)/Assistant Director (AD) approval had been granted. This does not mean that approval was not granted - the Recruitment team did not have the emails to confirm approval.

28% of files had no evidence to confirm that an approval form had been received. Of the remaining cases an approval form was seen from the manager, however, the email from the manager was not verified (this was due to the recruitment team not keeping them).

67% of files whereby the short listing was not retained/available. (25% were files which had been sent to archiving).

22% of cases where invitation to interview letters could not be found on the employees files. However, copies of the letter could be obtained from the SAP system.

53% where no evidence was retained to confirm the decision made by the recruiting manager eg no summary or assessment forms seen. Out of the assessment forms seen there were a number which had been completed in pencil and also added up incorrectly (this would not have affected the person from being employed).

8% of files where copies of CRB certificates were on file (photocopying Disclosure certificates is strictly prohibited). 1 case where the CRB had been overlooked (this person did have a current CRB when he was a volunteer). 5 files where no CRB proforma were on file, waiting to be filed away. Dates taken form the spreadsheet held by the recruitment team. 2 proformas which had not been signed by a member of the recruitment team to confirm disclosure seen and verified.

8% of files where no formal offer letters had been seen.

5% of files without signed contracts (not a legal requirement but best practice)

3% where no identification was seen.

All files looked at did not have any structure and not all documents were stamped by the team. (some guidance on file structure has been supplied to HR).

5.1.3 Please see appendix 1 for the end to end time on actions taken within the recruitment process. The testing revealed that all information was not found or



available to give a true end to end time for each action in the process. This was partly because information should have been kept by the recruitment team but also that managers had not sent back the required documents.

5.2 Mystery shopper

5.2.1 5 applications were requested by different methods and at varying times.

80% of applications were received within 1 to 5 days.

20% of mystery shopper had not received the application form as requested and the person they spoke to was a bit reluctant to send a form out in the post.

40% where the photocopying was smudged and not readable.

All packs referred to Equal Opportunities monitoring in the letter and equalities monitoring in the application form.

5.3 Survey

5.3.1 A survey was undertaken on 11 managers asking questions relating to the recruitment process. The results of the survey were:

64% said that they would like to see a more active recruitment team and have more chasing of documents to help speed up the process.

54% of managers said that they were not happy with the recruitment process and felt it was a lengthy process which has a lot of forward and backwards motion which causes unnecessary delays. There were delays in the checks conducted after the interview stage which delayed the person starting.

45% wished the recruitment process was generally more efficient and helped to get someone in post as effectively as possible.

64% had attended the training. 36% had said it was adequate, 18% had said they didn’t learn anything and 9% had said that the trainer was defensive. The remaining 36% had not attended the training.

5.4 Temporary Staffing

5.4.1 10 cases were sampled to verify that the key controls were in place, for both temporary and casual staff.

5.4.2 Audit testing on Internal Staff Register revealed:

40% of cases did not have evidence to confirm the qualifications. However, in 1 case details were bought in after the file had been reviewed.

10% where no evidence of identification for right to work was found. The team had explained that they must have seen the evidence at the time of the CRB being applied for. However, Internal Audit were not able to verify this ( evidence has now been provided)



20% where a copy of the CRB was on file and another where the old CRB was on file waiting for our record to come through. This person was working for the Council.

All files looked at did not have any structure and not all documents were date stamped by the team.

5.4.3 Audit testing on agency issues revealed:

70% of invoices where goods were receipted after the invoice was received. The time taken varied from 3 to 15 days (due to managers not sending in authorised timesheets)

80% of invoices had been traced to the internal trading order for the relevant team. The remaining 20% had queries and a credit memo was due.

60% of invoices were posted on to the council’s financial system after the date of the invoice which varied from 7 days to 19 days (this effects BVPI8 which is below target at present) This is an issue as the vendor would send in an invoice that has been queried from the initial date not the date the invoice query has been resolved.

5.4.4 The temporary recruitment team carry out audits on an annual basis, these became formal from 2009. The audits highlighted that 100% of the agencies that had been checked required further action/s on them. These were split into different categories depending on the importance of the evidence required. Some of the outstanding actions raised in the last audits have not been resolved and the team is working with the relevant agencies.

6 Summary

6.1 Currently, Tribal draft the ad-text based on the job description and person specification, this then requires the recruiting manager’s approval and this can result in e-mails back & forth between recruitment, Tribal and the manager several times. This is particularly frustrating when the recruiting manager is away from their e-mail, resulting in a missed deadline, which can then cause a further 7 days delay. (Please see front page of a sample booklet at appendix 2)

6.2 There are many forms to complete during the recruitment process and the data required can be repetitive. Documentation needs to be such that the appropriate information is captured to allow the required action to be undertaken effectively and efficiently, but should also ensure that this requires minimal time and effort to complete.

6.3 Managers decide on the applicants to be interviewed send the pack to recruitment for interview letters to be sent out and then have to collect the pack for the interviews. This has to be repeated after the interviews so the recruitment team can send out the preliminary offer letter and carry out the checks. This is duplication of handling with associated risks of information being lost or delayed in transit.


AUDIT REPORT 7 MARCH 2010 – E122/10

6.4 Managers were not always kept informed of what stage the checks were at. Recently this has improved as weekly emails are sent from recruitment on outstanding information. Returning the responsibility to managers should eliminate this problem.

6.5 Not all managers sent back the relevant completed documents to the recruitment team. From the testing a manager had not followed the recruitment process which meant that very little evidence was obtained.


MANAGEMENT ACTION PLAN

The recommendations are categorised on the following basis:

Essential - Implementation is required with immediate effect to address a weakness that fundamentally undermines the control/ objective of that system.

Important - Implementation is required within a short period of time to address weaknesses that seriously undermine the control/ objective of that system.

Standard - Management need to take recommended action within a reasonable period to address weaknesses that may undermine system control/ objective

Ref. Finding Risk/ Implication Agreed actions Management

Comments

Manager Responsible &

Target Date

1

Processing The recruitment process is not as effective or efficient as it could be. Audit tests found delays in the system through duplication of effort in completing numerous forms and the necessity to send information back and forth between HR and the recruiting manager. Audit tests also highlighted issues with completion and storing of required information. The files held by the recruitment and temporary recruitment teams were poorly structured.

Wasted management time completing numerous forms with duplicated information and unnecessary transferring of information and files. Inefficiencies and delays in the recruitment process may result in loss of possible candidates.

The recruitment team should review the suggested new flows with a view to changing the recruitment processes. This should be piloted with selected managers across the Council (supported by appropriate guidance and training), to form an opinion about how to move forward to achieve an effective and efficient customer focussed recruitment process which allows managers to recruit the right person, at the right time and with the relevant experience.

Agreed

30/6/10

Assistant Director HR Strategy

Interim SDM – HR

HR Manager, Resourcing

NB Any cost implications arising from implementation of the recommendations by Mouchel must be agreed in advance with the appropriate Client Officer and the Partnership Delivery Manager


Appendix 1

Number of files looked at 41 of which 5 were processed by another method. Therefore the figures reported are based on 36 cases. The end to end time for the actions is based on the information obtained in the audit.

Description of action Information not available or not known

Days taken

From resignation to start date

39% (14/36) 61% (22/36) from 1 day to 1232 days. ( * see below)

From approval to advert 31% (11/36) 67% (24/36) 5 to 65 days

2% (1/36) other

Closing date to short listing

89% (32/36) 11% (4/36) 3 to 17 days

Short listing to interview letter

89% (32/36) 11% (4/36) 4 to 17 days

Date of letter to interview 33% (12/36) 67% 4 to 32 days

Date of interview to decision

61%(22/36) 39% (14/36) 0 to 9 days

Decision to offer 64% (23/36) 36% (13/36) 2 to 19 days

Date reference requested to first reference received

14% (5/36) 86% (31/36) 0 to 76 days

Date reference requested to second reference received

25% (9/36) 75% (27/36) 0 to 53 days

From decision to start date 64% (23/36) 36% (13/36) 34 to 130 days

Closing date to appointment

2% (1/36) 98% (35/36) 30 to 369 days

Decision to appointment 64% (23/36) 36% (13/36) 34 to 130 days

* The 1232 days was due to the organisation not being able to recruit a full time post due to changes within the way the service was being delivered to the community, temporary arrangements were put into place.

Appendix 2

RECRUITMENT BOOKLET

BY COMPLETING ALL SECTIONS AND STAGES IN THIS BOOKLET, SHOULD ENABLE YOU

AS THE MANAGER TO RECRUIT A MEMBER OF STAFF AS EFFECTIVELY AND EFFICIENCY

AS POSSIBLE.

FURTHER TEMPLATES CAN BE FOUND ON THE RECRUITMENT WEBSITE.

POST TITLE

POST NUMBER

PLEASE TICK AS

COMPLETED

1. APPROVAL FORM COMPLETED

2. SHORT LISTING COMPLETED PART 1

3. SHORT LISTING COMPLETED PART 2

4. COMPLETED INTERVIEW ASSESSMENT FORM

5. COMPETED ASSESSMENT SUMMARY FORM

6. COMPLETED APPOINTMENT FORM

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