Evolution of Recruitment in the South West of England

Acorn Recruitment South West has clocked up the mileage over the last 25 years.

Starting initially as an in-house recruiter to service the business needs of the owners of manufacturing businesses in Somerset and Devon Acorn quickly needed to transform the local recruitment approach of using agencies as there was simply a lack of interest and availability in the local market.

 

There are echoes of these challenges today, but more of that later.

At the turn of the century, the only source of external labour was from the weaker economic countries in the original European Union, and this meant sourcing and usually housing people from Portugal and Spain who were economic migrants.

To achieve success often revolved around personal contacts with landlords and small hotels as it was easier to find workers than to house them.

It was a struggle as it usually is when innovating but it was encouraging as other local businesses started asking for assistance and this led to the recruitment agency being spun off from the manufacturing businesses.

The big move forward was the extension of the European Union bringing in 8 further countries with 80 million population of which a half were Polish.

The business benefits to the manufacturing businesses were immediate. Workers were interested, and wanted to know what was going on and how they could help. In broad terms the costs of the labour element of the manufacturing process reduced by 20% and this fed through to the bottom line.

Early lessons were learnt when trying to help other businesses:

• 86% of businesses did not know what they wanted
• Very few had investigated the legal processes
• Majority did not want to embrace change
• Xenophobia was rife on the shop floor

Because Acorn was under no pressure to perform the Directors decided that unless enquirers were committed to the processes we would not become involved.

 

Coupled with this in 2005 The Gangmaster Licensing Authority was formed and we were one of the first registrants with a code of 005. (The license is now in the name of our parent company Skills Provision).

As Skills expanded nationally and from 2009 internationally Acorn concentrated on the 6 counties making up the South West namely Cornwall, Devon. Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire and this continues to be the case today.

Whilst we are a 360-degree service provider and can draw support from elsewhere in the Group, we remain best known for the supply of international labour but the market has changed through political, economic and technological changes.

We look back in embarrassment at our in-house attempts at creating a website but have moved on but more work remains to be done. The likes of Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter hadn’t been invented or were in their infancy but now play an integral role in the business.

Like most businesses, we were hammered during COVID and carry the battle scars to this day.

However, the biggest change to our business mix has been brought about by BREXIT.

Fortunately, we rightly foresaw the future and had prepared for the fact that the market in the UK would change forever because of BREXIT. We were one of the few to see this coming and these points highlight the challenges and the opportunities:

• Only 3.5% of UK businesses had obtained a license at the end of 2022
• Therefore, the other 96.5% are restricted to hiring UK nationals or a dwindling pool of other nationalities with the “right to remain”
• Right to remain pool has dropped from 5 million to under 3 million in 2 years
• Unemployment at 3.7% masks the fact that those willing and able to work could find employment if they wished

Our journey to here has been interesting and varied, but one aspect we have continually improved upon are the service levels offered. We continually source the right people for the right jobs throughout the region. Our reputation is strong and it will continue to improve.

If your business is in need of employment-based support that constantly delivers, drop us a line at enquiries@acornrecruitmentsw.co.uk or call +44 (0)2079890750.

We are local and we do care.

 

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