Resource Management
Case Studies

HBOS Card Services

HBOS Card Services, formerly Bank One International, the overseas operation of Bank One Corporation, entered a highly competitive market when it began to offer its low-cost credit cards to UK consumers in 1998. Operating from a call centre in Cardiff, Wales, it differentiated its products on price and by its range of affinity schemes, partnering with organisations like Yahoo!, Bristol City FC, the Special Olympics and David Lloyd Leisure to offer attractive, co-branded cards.

HBOS Card Services is aiming to be the lowest cost issuer of cards and to compete with Barclaycard. It is now the No1 issuer of new cards.

HBOS Card Services employs 1,800 people based in Cardiff, Dunfermline and Reading.

The Business Challenge

As a rapidly expanding business, HBOS Card Services recognised the need for an effective resourcing strategy. Their key concern was to ensure quality of recruitment was not compromised by quantity.

Like many large organisations, there were a number of key issues with their approach to recruitment. In particular:

• The lack of a consistent process (recruitment was carried out on an ad-hoc reactive basis)
• Overuse of 3rd party agencies with no supplier management process
• Excessive recruitment cycle times (with a particular issue in Marketing)
• A poor recruitment brand as a result of the disjointed process (again, this was especially prevalent within Marketing)
• No cost control
• No Management Information

HBOS were looking for a ‘Best Practice’ solution to address all of the above issues, with a focus on quality of applicant and delivery to the business.

After undertaking an extensive feasibility study, Resource Management worked with HBOS to develop a strategy and best practice process which was specific to the needs of the business, reduced cost, cycle time and more importantly, improved the quality of new recruits. In the first instance, we led a Resource Management/HBOS project team which developed and implemented a communications strategy prior to implementation.

In essence, we presented the recruitment solution to individual Board Members, the HR team, Business Managers and the wider organisation as appropriate. This had the advantage of raising awareness of the process, but also gaining initial ‘buy in’.

The recruitment process is now continually updated and improved to reflect the changing demands of HBOS and the recruitment market as a whole.

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