Fiona Brown

Said the following about London Underground Recruitment Team:

“This nomination is for the London Underground Recruitment Team

Context

• London Underground Recruitment Team recruits in a unique context, with unique challenges. London Underground is a high profile public sector organisation, it is under a great deal of public scrutiny, whether at exceptional moments, such as Tube strikes, during groundbreaking upgrade works or on normal business days. The team responsible for delivering the recruitment strategy for this organisation is innovative, results focused and deliver excellence in customer service - yet they appear to take this all in their stride.

• Hiring decisions have a direct impact on the quality of service TfL provides to Londoners and tourists from around the world. In a service oriented environment, with a significant effect on daily life and work in the capital, the London Underground Recruitment Team is fundamental to the organisations people strategy. This critical and energetic recruitment delivery team is essential to making the right recruitment choices to help London Underground keep London moving.

• This recruitment team bears a huge responsibility for making jobs available to the local population and reducing unemployment. Currently, the organisation it supports employs over 30,000 staff and that number continues to grow. We attract an average 80,000 applications for every 1,000 job vacancies, with an overwhelming interest in front facing Customer Service Assistant roles, which can attract over 20,000 applications at any one time!

• London Underground Recruitment Team are responsible for managing and delivering its huge volume of vacancies, daily, and does this with great diversity - from recruiting Customer Service Assistants and Train Operators to support the safe transport of our customers to appointing Directors to lead the various groundbreaking network improvements we are so proud of.

• The variety in terms of candidate requirements, salary and prospects makes a one-size-fits-all approach to recruitment impossible.

• In London, candidates move fast. The best can transfer quickly from job to job. Salary expectations are high and their talent is in great demand from competitors. This provides a challenge to TfL as a public sector employer and therefore the London Underground Recruitment Team must be agile, and find compelling ways to promote London Underground as an employer of choice.

London Underground Recruitment Team is phenomenal…

This recruitment team has adopted a candidate centric approach in response to these challenges. To highlight some key achievements:

Operational High Volume Recruitment:

Operational High Volume recruitment encompasses the mass recruitment of Customer Service Assistants, Train Operators, Duty Managers, Station Administrators…and more. Over 1,100 operational high volumes positions have been hired to this year so far. Great creativity and innovation goes into designing the best recruitment strategy for the business – and each solution is bespoke. All key parties from across the business are involved to enable the London Underground Recruitment Team to deliver the operational resource requirements for London Underground. The team has delivered the resource requirements for the upcoming Night Tube.

Management and Transition of RPO:

The transitioning of the RPO from the previous to current provider has been a challenge and one successfully implemented. London Underground Recruitment Team was fundamental to this success and to the successful partnering relationship which is now in place with Capita.

Asset Maintenance Recruitment:

Asset Maintenance recruitment accounts for 1/3 of the teams recruitment activity. The recruitment consultants who deliver these requirements for the business are strong subject matter experts with a high degree of technical knowledge about each role, business area and required candidates. Whether it be providing late night assessments or supporting managers to fill niche roles, the London Underground Recruitment Team are critical to the success of the essential maintenance of the railway and are clear experts in their field.

Service Modernisation and Upgrade programmes:

These critical projects are both scheduled and ad hoc so require highly skilled recruitment consultants to be available often at short notice. Key to this is the close working relationship between the business and the recruitment teams and through this they are able to respond in an agile way and have a residual knowledge and understanding of what is needed. The LU Recruitment Team is currently leading and responsible for the recruitment of groundbreaking upgrade and modernisation programmes across the network. Some high profile projects currently inflight are:

• Four Lines Modernisation Programme (The largest modernisation Programme in Europe, modernising the signals across 4 major lines)

• Metropolitan Line Extension (A £284m Programme extending the Met line from Croxley to Watford Junction)

The team work collaboratively with other partnering recruitment teams and HR Delivery teams to maximize knowledge and deliver a world-class service.

Enhancing employee and management capability / Getting ‘under the skin’ of the business:

100% positive hiring manager post recruitment survey feedback has been achieved for 5 consecutive periods. The team also regularly host recruitment team meetings within the business and engaging in their ways of working and maintain their knowledge of business priorities. The team are constantly embodying the TfL HR ethos of Trusted Professional Partner – knowledge, professionalism and hard work for a shared objective

In summary, if ever there was a worthy winner of HR/Recruitment Team of the Year -The London Underground Recruitment Team are it!“