Using tech to supercharge long-standing employment services

Recruitment company Blue Arrow is widely recognised as a trustworthy, go-to source of professional talent to the businesses it supports, and this reflects throughout all its services.

As part of the UK’s second largest staffing business – The Impellam Group – it thrives on a well-established understanding that, when it comes to referring the right kind of employees into roles across the hospitality, public service, manufacturing, retail and many other industries, its expertise is unrivalled.

Blue Arrow has cultivated many long-standing relationships with a host of business clients that have come to rely on its 60 branches nationwide as a trusted source of much-needed, proficient and trustworthy employees.

As nationally recognised staffing experts, the company also works with a number of third party analysts to provide industry insights to employers and is a respected thought-leader on various business matters within the UK. It’s turning to tech to supercharge its operations.

When work is at stake, time is of the essence

With the majority of clients facing a financial penalty and/or the loss of vital candidates should employment screening checks fail to be completed in time, the need to ensure these are completed quickly and efficiently during any recruitment process is an essential part of all Blue Arrow business.

During the course of its journey from a post-war start-up to the nationally acclaimed recruitment service that it is today, it became evident in more recent years that too many client opportunities were being lost due to delays caused by traditional, paper-based employment screening processes.

Frank Fernandes, project manager and business analyst at Blue Arrow, says: “With manual DBS checks taking on average between six and eight weeks to process, Blue Arrow branches were struggling to keep up as cleared checks returning late in the day left them with little to no turnaround time to complete their own paperwork.

“We were losing out on clients and it was massively affecting the business – a situation that was then exacerbated by additional delays within branches that were unable to process their own documentation in time.”

Getting back to basics and moving them forward

With these challenges in mind, Blue Arrow set out with a clear brief to find an online supplier that could get the job done in half the time. Meetings with three potential service providers led to an ongoing partnership with CBS that’s reduced the turnaround time for DBS checks to be completed from 6-8 weeks to around just five working days.

With other suppliers offering online and offline checks only via two separate systems, CBS was able to provide a hi-tech digital system incorporating both elements and supported Blue Arrow in making the switch from offline to online as smoothly and efficiently as possible.

Now branch staff are able to access the information they require in real time, where beforehand many couldn’t tell when a candidate’s certificate had been issued, and are able to check on the status of a check digitally at any time.

Frank says: “The digital system introduced by Complete Background Screening (CBS) has had a massive impact on our business, while Rachel herself provided honest and upfront advice where other competitors appeared to bamboozle us with numbers.

“We absolutely love the high tech solution CBS has provided for us, which enabled us to take the offline paperwork process we had been using before and take it forward into the new digital system introduced to us with very little disruption.”

Moving forward, Blue Arrow intends to continue its pursuit of hi-tech solutions with a view to streamlining other areas of the business further, with plans to introduce cloud-based phones and other digitally-based compliance systems in future too.

Rachel Bedgood, CEO at Complete Background Screening, says: “To work with such a well-respected, nationally recognised business and help bring its processes in line with its overall aims and objectives to help it continue flourishing it the modern world is a great honour for CBS.

“To know that our systems have made such a difference, particularly when it comes to bringing people into paid employment, is hugely satisfying for CBS staff and we look forward to providing ongoing support to this long-established company as it goes on thriving for many more years.”