Thornton and Lowe | Strengthening recruitment and improving employee experience

Thornton and Lowe’s story …

The lowdown

Established in 2009, Thornton & Lowe has grown to be one of the largest and most trusted bid management consultancies in the UK. With a tight team of 47 employees, they provide bid writing services, including an outsourced bidding function, bid recruitment services, bid reviews, bid software and bid writing courses. 

We sat down with Rachel Edmundson, the Operations Support Manager, to understand the difference Employment Hero has made in transforming their employee’s experience. 

How it started – The need for a modernised system 

Prior to Employment Hero, Rachel was bogged down by admin, leaving her with little time to work on bigger projects and be strategic in her role. 

“I didn’t have time to work on bigger projects because I was doing all this admin that took up hours of my day.” 

Not only did she spend large amounts of time getting new joiners up to speed on how to use the HR system, she also needed to constantly follow-up with employees to ensure they completed the necessary HR tasks like performance reviews. 

The need to improve how they managed people operations pushed Rachel to look for an HR system that had more functionality and was more user-friendly. 

How it’s going – how we’ve supported Thornton and Lowe

The switch to Employment Hero has revolutionised people management at their workplace with significant efficiency improvements. Since implementing the platform, Rachel has got less queries than before. 

“I have done some training sessions to help the team get up to speed with the new system. I haven’t gotten many questions on how to use things because it’s so user-friendly,” 

Streamlined recruitment with an Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

As an organisation that not only hires for their internal needs but also resourced for external companies, Thornton and Lowe needed a way to streamline their recruitment process. 

Traditionally, the organisation relies primarily on direct referrals and traditional job boards like LinkedIn and Indeed for candidates. However, building a candidate pool with various candidate sources proved difficult. 

“We try to build a bit of a candidate pool, but it has been a bit all over the place. We needed to check all these different job boards and sometimes missed applications.” 

The ability to streamline the entire recruitment process into just one system has been a game-changer. 

“It has definitely been much better having just one system where we can upload the job and post it onto all job boards. We can also email everyone directly and see their responses directly on the platform. It has saved me so much time and having everything in one place has made life much easier.” 

Having just one platform for recruitment also meant that everyone who was involved in the hiring process could be kept informed about the candidate’s performance. Rachel shared, “we can easily see how the candidate performed in the previous stages.”

Finding the perfect candidate with the help of SmartMatch

Beyond streamlining the recruitment process, Rachel also saw the benefit of SmartMatch in helping her find the right candidate for a niche position. Rachel remembers that “the role we were recruiting for was very niche and we didn’t get many applicants. SmartMatch suggested a couple of candidates who were great quality matches and had the skills we needed,”. 

“The candidates suggested were probably people we wouldn’t have considered straight off their resume. SmartMatch really helped as we could easily see all the essential information at a glance without having to read through the resume which can get quite cluttered. It helped us identify that the candidates had all the right skills and experience we needed for the role.” 

The ability for SmartMatch to find out a candidate’s interest also proved helpful. “It helped that we could see that he has expressed interest in the role so that we are not just cold calling people like you would with an application on traditional job boards.” 

What also stood out to Rachel was the quality of the candidates. “What I’ve noticed with SmartMatch is that although you don’t get as many matches, they are all relevant. It takes away the initial filtering process that you typically have to do.” 

A smoother onboarding experience

Moving from recruitment to onboarding has also been a breeze. “Having the entire recruitment process built directly into the HR platform also means that information can be easily carried over when onboarding. There’s no duplication of information and the platform also tells us when there is information missing”

“I used to spend half an hour during inductions teaching going through our HR processes and the platform we used to use, but because they’ve got access to it from when they are hired I no longer have to go through this process, saving me so much time.” 

The ability to streamline their recruitment and onboarding experience didn’t only make life easier for Rachel, it has also improved the experience for their candidates and employees. 

 “I have many new joiners that have said that this is the smoothest onboarding journey they’ve ever been through. They’ve enjoyed the recruitment process, it’s nice being kept updated.” 

A centralised platform for everything people management 

Beyond recruitment and onboarding, the impact of Employment Hero could be felt throughout the employee’s lifecycle. Rachel shared how managers now get more autonomy over managing their employees. From performance reviews, and leave management to even learning and development. 

With a single centralised platform, employees and managers can easily access performance reviews and complete them at their own time. Tracking annual leave has also been simplified.he ability to see when everyone else is off has helped with resource management significantly. 

The team has also started to build out the learning and development platform. Rachel told us that, “We’re putting all the training we previously saved in OneDrive into an interactive training course on the platform. Line managers can also see what their employees have done.” 

For Rachel, the implementation of Employment Hero has also meant a shift in her day-to-day at work. She no longer needs to spend countless hours on admin. 

“I’m in a more strategic role now and our team has also grown as a result. We can work on more big projects, focus on well-being and more strategic initiatives. Work has definitely been more fulfilling.” 

Curious about how Employment Hero can help your business?

Employment Hero’s employment OS is an all in one solution that helps businesses find and hire top talent, as well as onboard new hires, automate complex payroll and drive employee engagement. All of our services are backed by UK based support. Employment Hero can handle the admin, so you can focus on the aspects of your business that matter – your people. 

If you’d like to learn more about how Employment Hero can help support your growing business and automate your HR admin – speak to one of our business specialists today.