The client.
Holcim employs a massive workforce across Australia, with an expansive operation that hires unskilled labourers right through to C-suite leaders. It’s no surprise that recruitment is integral to Holcim’s continued success.
The objectives.
- Ensure quality and safety in recruitment, to ensure quality and safety in Holcim’s work.
- Verify qualifications and experience of new hires.
- Hire and retain the best staff in the competitive construction recruitment industry.
“At Holcim, we are really focused on safety and quality,” explains Garth Quinn Holcim’s National Recruitment and Retention Manager.
“Those are our two main drivers, but safety is by far the biggest focus for everyone. Most companies say they strive for safety, but we live and breathe it. People who’ve previously worked in oil and gas and then join Holcim are usually surprised by just how central safety is to our business – we are driving safety through everything we do, and we are constantly looking at ways to be better at it.
“There’s been an infrastructure boom in Sydney recently, which will be replicated in Brisbane and Melbourne soon,” Quinn says. “So it’s hard to find the best talent at all levels, whether it’s engineering, unskilled labour or project management.
“Everyone is looking for the same type of person: the best. So it’s a tight little market and very competitive.
Risk comes in a number of areas. We need to qualify people in various phases: that means checking their employment history, getting police checks, as well as verifying their right to work in Australia. Failure to properly check an applicant exposes us to a lot of risk. So it’s all about risk aversion.
“The police check, especially, is a given for everyone – at all levels of the company. Engineers and accountants – it doesn’t matter.
“If you employ someone who isn’t qualified and they design a product for a customer that fails, then questions will be asked. If a civil engineer, for example, designs a product that falls over, that would be a potential lawsuit.”
The results.
“We’ve been using CVCheck now for 18 months.” […] “They are a vital part of our verification process. We select from a menu of CVCheck products and it’s as simple as putting in a name, address and phone number. CVCheck does the rest.
“There are also lots of engineers working on visa arrangements of different varieties. But by doing a VEVO (Visa Entitlement Verification Online) check, we can mitigate that risk of employing someone who doesn’t have the right to work here.”
“Qualifications are still one of the biggest things people falsify,” Quinn says. “In the past, it was a bit awkward to check. You’d have to go through the university system yourself, and often people would have three or four degrees, which is really time-consuming.
“Since we started using CVCheck, every external hire – that’s around 600-odd so far – has gone through their checking processes in various ways,” finishes Quinn.
For the full client story on Holcim, click here.
