North Yorkshire Council

 

Madeline Hoskin, Assistant Director of Technology

22 November 2024

 

Procurement of an Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

 

Report of the Corporate Director Gary Fielding.

 

1.0       PURPOSE OF REPORT

 

1.1 To seek approval to for the North Yorkshire Council to procure an Applicant Tracking System (ATS).

 

 

2.0       SUMMARY

 

2.1       This report outlines the recommended proposal that the Authority proceed with the procurement of an ATS system, in order to reprocure a compliant contract.    

 

 

3.0       BACKGROUND        

 

3.1       Following a procurement process in 2018, the former North Yorkshire County Council awarded a contract to HavasPeople for an integrated ATS known as Engage to support the Authority’s Recruitment requirements.

 

The initial contract period was awarded in 2018 and then re-awarded via G-Cloud 12 from 5 November 2022 for a further 2 years with the option for a further 24-month extension. A decision was taken to utilise the first 12-month extension and therefore the current contract end date is 4 November 2025 (albeit with an option to extend for a further 12-months if required).

 

 

4.0       DETAILED PRESENTATION OF THE SUBSTANTIVE ISSUE

 

4.1       North Yorkshire has half the rate of national unemployment rate, labour locally is scarce and in high demand. The Council’s workforce profile shows us that in additional to natural turnover, 35% of the workforce is over 55 years old. Recruiting and retaining new talent is mission critical to the Council’s success today and even more so in the future.

 

The labour market has an expectation of a swift, convenient ‘one click’ application and frictionless, engaging recruitment experience, connecting positively with their prospective employer. Anything less enables applicants to gain work with one of our competitors, work that is readily available.

 

North Yorkshire Council are required to be an employer of choice to ensure the attraction of high-quality applicants, is customer focused and therefore making the journey to becoming an employee one that is engaging, efficient, user friendly and reliable.    With this ambition in mind the ATS available to the Authority needs to be efficient and reliable with the ability to integrate with the HR, Payroll and Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) systems to deliver efficiencies with automated processes therefore improving the user and customer experiences. 

           

 

The current system frequently experiences issues, such as poorly managed changes by the supplier and supplier quality control processes are poor, often causing unplanned downtime. As the current contract, includes minimal and only very recently agreed Service Level Agreements (SLA’s), which are difficult to enforce, so there are limited routes to escalate and resolve issues with the supplier. On average, 25 incidents are generally raised internally every month. These incidents have an impact on applicants (general public), managers and recruitment professionals.  This is inefficient and does not support the Authority’s workforce priority to recruit and retain staff. 

 

Limitations in the capabilities of the current system also require several manual workarounds to support the recruitment process, which earlier market engagement suggest that other systems on the market should not require. One example of this is that Engage does not have any reporting dashboards, requiring management information to be collated manually. Recruitment technology develops fast and the Authority is missing out on the opportunity to advance modern attraction techniques that are more widely available on the market, such as enabling the ability for staff network sharing, using Artificial Intelligence (AI)  to aid effective shortlisting and automated talent matching to reduce the need to recruit due to using applicant and staff mobility.

 

Hiring managers experience of using the current recruitment system describe it as clunky and unclear a source of frustration, where managers require significant support from recruitment professional to navigate leading to duplication of effort and potential delays.

 

The current licencing cost is circa £34,000 for 24/25 however there is an acknowledgment that the Authority may need to invest to improve the current offering.  At this stage, these additional costs are unclear as the Request for Information (RFI) responses need to be reviewed – closing date for these submissions was 11 October 2024.     

 

Resourcing Solutions deliver recruitment services to external clients, the income raised from this work contributes significantly to covering the staff costs of the service delivered internally. External clients do not access nor use the system; recruiters use the system to support their external service.

 

 

5.0       ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS CONSIDERED

 

5.1       Do nothing – rejected due to the current platform being deemed inefficient but also on the basis that there is only one further 12-month extension available to the Authority and therefore to remain compliant a procurement exercise needs to take place.  Also on this basis, the Authority needs to look now to start this process due to the timescales associated with procuring and implementing a new system.

 

 

6.0       FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

 

6.1       Finance have been consulted as part of this process.  The costs for a replacement system are unclear at this stage of the process   Once approval to procure is granted all the costs for implementation of a new system are clarified (including any additional staffing costs) a growth bid and supporting business case will need to be reviewed and approved.

 

7.0       LEGAL IMPLICATIONS

 

7.1       Legal will be consulted as part of this process once a route to market is identified. 

 

8.0       EQUALITIES IMPLICATIONS

 

8.1       This is a continuation of existing provision which meets NYC EIA standards.

 

9.0       CLIMATE CHANGE IMPLICATIONS

 

9.1       In procuring the HCM suite of products NYC will be able to greatly reduce the number of

printed payslips due to the availability of the MyView app which works on personal mobile phone and tablet devices. In procuring the HCM system, Zellis will move the Authorities infrastructure from its own data centre to Microsoft’s Cloud environment. Depending on the existing set-up, Microsoft Cloud ranges from 22% to 93% more energy efficient than traditional data centres, and 72% to 98% more carbon efficient than traditional data centres.

 

10.0     HUMAN RESOURCES IMPLICATIONS

 

10.1     Additional HR resource is required to procure, implement and embed a change in ATS to release the benefits. It is anticipated that the change to a new ATS will result in the opportunity for HR to make process improvements due to the newer, more integrated software, and efficiencies in time across with the major focus being on realising improvements for candidate engagement and ease of use for line managers across the council.

 

11.0     ICT IMPLICATIONS

 

11.1     Technology Services have been consulted and are aware that there will be resources needed to facilitate the change to ATS. This will mainly be with the TSAT HR team. Project and resource planning will identify in greater detail when this is needed. Technology Services manage the contract and budget for the provision of the ATS system. This budget will need to increase to cover the increased contract costs.

 

 

12.0     REASONS FOR RECOMMENDATIONS

 

12.1     The current ATS system is inefficient, at times unstable and can be challenging to use for both internal staff and external applicants. The Council strives to be a first-class employer that attracts high quality applicants, is customer focused and therefore making the journey to becoming an employee one that is efficient, user friendly and reliable. With this ambition in mind the ATS available to the Authority needs to be efficient and reliable with the ability to integrate with the HR and Payroll and Background Checking systems to deliver efficiencies with more automated processes, therefore improving the user and customer experiences. The current contract for the Engage system is due to expire in November 2025 with only 1 further 12-month extension available and therefore it is necessary for the Authority to look to procure at this stage given the timescales associated with procuring and implementing a new system but also to ensure there is a compliant contract in place.

 

 

 

 

 

13.0

RECOMMENDATION(S)      

 

 

13.1    It is recommended that the Authority commence a procurement exercise to procure a new ATS.  This will enable the Authority to improve the current offerings in relation to recruitment and ensure that the recruitment process is efficient, automated and user friendly.