WHILE traditionally companies have either left their human resource management and recruitment in the domain of agencies or achieved it in house, construction companies Clough Engineering and Hatch Kaiser answer was to join forces to form a joint agency which looks after both companies human resource needs.
The result has been HR Connect, which provides contractors to both companies.
On its books are contractors which fulfil the specialised needs of both construction companies.
It’s a move to make human resources, normally a drain on any company, pay for itself.
It’s a direction that has been mirrored by Fluor Daniels and is likely to catch on among other large companies.
In the case of HR Connect, both partners have to compete with each other for staff while HR Connect needs to compete with other agencies for Clough’s and Hatch Kaiser’s work on the open market place.
HR Connect head Anne Littlewood said the firm supplied only Clough and Hatch Kaiser but the opportunity was there in the future to begin supplying other companies including the owners’ competitors.
“I guess they saw it as a niche in the market. We are still competitive in the market place but we only have two clients,” Ms Littlewood said.
“Both Kaiser and Clough still have their own in-house human resources for full time staff.
“They joint venture on a lot of the major projects and they can optimise the opportunities for contractors.
“HR Connect sees itself as being very focussed on its contractors. We hope that is a point of differential in the marketplace. That’s why we get good feedback from our contractors that we look after them. We make sure that we keep in touch with them.”
But HR Connect is not totally limited in scope.
“We have got the flexibility to move into other areas of recruitment if we want. We only place engineers, drafters and project services people. So we don’t go into blue collar, information technology or anything like that,” Ms Littlewood said.
While contract labour has been attractive to companies like Clough Engineering and Hatch Kaiser, other companies like Austal Ships have reversed earlier decisions to use contract labour, preferring instead to have full time employees on the payroll.
An Austal Ships spokeswoman said the company had developed a strong focus on providing a stable workforce including a focus on recruiting apprentices. Last month Austal employed a further 70 apprentices to bring its workforce too more than 1,500.
