Congratulations – you’ve just won a place on a new public sector framework…..what do you need to do next to turn this business win into £££…..but how?
There are a number of areas that you need to think about in order to prepare your business and staff to start supplying under the framework and achieve an appropriate return on investment. We’ve identified a number of areas that you may wish to consider in your implementation plan.
KPIs
How are you going to measure your performance? What targets are you going to set at team and individual levels? You need to make these achievable, and ensure you share them with the team so that everyone is working towards the same goals. How are you going to motivate and support your staff to meet and exceed these?
Staff Training
How do you ensure that all staff working on the contract understand the operational processes specific to the framework? You not only need to document your processes (if you haven’t already), but cross reference these with the framework agreement, specification and other documents provided by the Contracting Authority to ensure that they align. This is going to be everything from the ordering process to service delivery KPIs, compliance of placed candidates, performance monitoring of workers whilst on assignment, management information, review meetings…..
How are you going to audit these processes to ensure they are consistently applied? Consider checklists, spot audits, monthly internal audits, framework audits etc.
Compliance
Do you have relevant policies and procedures in place that align with the contract (but also underpin your operational processes and staff training)? If not, you need to get these in place as they will form part of your framework audits. These may include but aren’t limited to:
- GDPR consent to audit signed by all candidates
- Verifying Identity procedure
- Verifying right to work procedure
- Verifying employment history & references procedure
- Verifying professional registration & qualifications procedure
- Criminal records and barring check procedure
- Work health assessments/occupational health procedure
- Statutory and mandatory training
- Internal audit and compliance procedure
- Procedures to ensure compliance with framework pricing and break glass, IR35, AWR, subcontracting protocols, introduction & transfer fees, jobsaware initiative
- Complaints procedure
- Procedures to mitigate the risk of modern slavery
- Appraisal and revalidation procedures (if applicable to your candidate group)
- Anti-bribery procedure (including gifts, corporate hospitality etc)
- Candidate documentation (employment contracts, key information document, agency worker’s handbook etc).
Is your system capable of providing the nature, content and format of management information required for the framework and contracting authorities purchasing under it? If no, how will you gather, compile and present this MI in the required format and at the required frequency? Provision of accurate management information is not only a great way to track your performance – it’s a statutory requirement from day one of all frameworks!
Candidate Attraction/Database Development
Do you have candidates on your database who are fully compliant and ready to start? If not, then you may need to consider a candidate attraction strategy to build such a database. How are you going to find and retain these people in a challenging labour market?
Social Value Delivery
In all likelihood, you have already had to specify measurable social value commitments which you now need to deliver within a specified timeframe. The Contracting Authority will require you to provide management information and evidence to show you have met the criteria you agreed to in your tender on an ongoing basis – how are you going to do this? You may need to put someone (or a team of people) in charge of social value and implement a strategy to include things like:
- Identifying partners in the locations of supply (e.g. apprenticeship providers, schools/colleges for delivering careers events, charities that you will support with volunteering hours, referral partners to access NEETs etc). You will then need to set up mutually beneficial agreements with these partners to enable you to deliver the commitments you made in the tender.
- Scheduling time for relevant people to participate in your social value commitments – don’t leave this until the day before you need to submit reporting!
- Implementing a communications plan to gain internal buy-in to your social value strategy (who is going to deliver it and how?), and also external awareness of the projects that you are planning to deliver to galvanise engagement (through social media campaigns, partnerships etc).
- Do you have a carbon reduction plan? If yes, how are you going to monitor your progress towards achieving year-on-year progress towards net zero?
Business Development
You’re definitely going to need to plan your business development strategy to enable you to penetrate organisations purchasing under the framework and build trusted partnerships with targeted decision makers.
- Which organisations purchase under the framework that you’ve just been awarded?
- How are you going to identify relevant decision makers?
- How are you going to market your services? Please note that on frameworks, vacancies are not cascaded out to all suppliers – you have won a right to supply but access to a pipeline of guaranteed vacancies, so you need to sell your services to potential customers and beat the competition!
- How are you going to budget and forecast to ensure that you have the right resources in the right place at the right time?
- What makes you different/better than the other recruitment businesses on the framework?
If you don’t have the answers to these (and I’m sure many other questions), you might want to contact Catherine Turner from CT Consulting Ltd – a partner of Brunton Bid Writing for nearly 15 years.
Catherine’s team has over 60 years’ combined experience of implementing new contracts. They really have been there, done it and got the t-shirt!
