Client Case Study – Synthes: Reorganizing the staffing process leads to huge efficiencies and far better controls

Overview:

Synthes is a $1B global medical device company with US headquarters in West Chester, PA. The company hires approximately 700 new employees per year across North America and augments their workforce with a 100 person contingent labor force across multiple skill sets throughout the company.

Synthes Challenge:

Human Resources has always had a very lean staff with the majority of its team located in the home office in Pennsylvania with a few HR generalists scattered around the country. This lean operating model spilled over into the company’s approach to talent acquisition ultimately resulting in Synthes’ hiring managers across the country working autonomously to reach outside the organization to work with a myriad of staffing providers. This approach to staffing allowed hiring mangers to achieve the individualized attention they felt they needed however this model failed to leverage any kind of economies of scale, consistencies in process and, possibly most concerning, a lack of compliance oversight in how business was getting done in the field. Over 200 vendors were being used without any standardized pricing strategy or contract vehicle.

What Monument Offered:

Monument Consulting was engaged in the winter of 2008 to serve as the central point for all third party staffing activities including temporary, contractor, contract-to-hire and permanent placements. In our role as the Managed Service Provider, we worked in partnership with Synthes HR to redefine and modify the staffing engagement model to achieve the efficiencies and compliance standards that were lacking.

What Monument Delivered:

Within 90 days, Monument had done a thorough survey and detailed the status of the hundreds of vendors. We communicated the new centralized process by which hiring managers would route requisitions through an online approval process where Monument initiated the job order, bill rate and recruitment process to the approved and compliant staffing firms. Candidates submitted by staffing firms are vetted by Monument and work with Synthes team members to coordinate interviews with hiring managers. If accepted, Monument works with the vendor to deliver appropriate pre-employment documents and assists with on-boarding activities.

Administratively, Monument also coordinates all time entry, approval and invoicing. Synthes now has only one invoicing and accounts payable process to manage through Monument. All funds are passed to Monument then immediately distributed to the appropriate vendors.

Tangible Results Realized:

After approximately nine months in production, Synthes has enjoyed tremendous efficiencies through the Managed Services model. Hiring managers and HR no longer deal directly with the hundreds of phone calls from vendors. Time saved speaking to vendors and managing the dozens of inbound candidates is minimized through Monument’s filtering process. A centralized rate card has also been instituted for the first time across the company to bring standardization and cost management. Though the company lacked good historical data, Synthes agrees that the hourly rates are now clearly communicated and in a tolerance range that is already yielding significant savings (about 8% of their $5M estimated annual spend).

In the end, Synthes has been able to outsource the management of its staffing management function and remain more focused upon its more strategic priorities.