Outsourcing to Insourcing

How can recruitment process outsourcing, or RPO, possibly have an impact on a trend called "insourcing"?

If there was ever a contradiction that works for talent management, this is it. Over the past several years, only about 15% of companies were using RPO solutions as part of their talent management strategy. More recently, economic uncertainty, even in key industries like the energy sector, has demanded the development of hiring solutions that combine the flexibility of temporary workers with the training and dedication of permanent staff.

To address this new workplace need, RPO and insourcing are the best pairing since peanut butter met chocolate. The marriage has created what some industry experts call "a poacher-turned-gamekeeper" approach to recruitment and retention. Instead of hiring, training, and on-boarding their own telephone sales force, for example, a company approaches an outside agency to do it for them.

The sales force is trained according to client specifications and works on the client's site as a cohesive team, but is paid, managed, and administrated by the RPO provider. The company can increase or decrease the size of its sales force according to its needs, current projects or campaigns, and output cycle. As the performance, size, and productivity of the team are perfected under the supervision of the RPO provider, the company can choose to "insource" the entire team and hire them as permanent employees at the close of the contract.

Look for insourcing and recruitment process outsourcing partnerships to prove, once and for all, that opposites attract in a growing number of companies.