Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 2
2
Accepted
Require departments to report consistent recruitment time data and establish civil service benchmarks
Conclusion
The time taken to recruit staff across the civil service is too slow. It takes an average of 99 days to hire new staff in the civil service, from the job being advertised to completing basic pre-employment checks. Completing security checks for new recruits can take on average an additional 171 days for candidates requiring the highest level of security clearance. The Cabinet Office acknowledges that civil service recruitment times are slow, particularly compared with private sector firms, and asserts that it is confident these can be reduced. Recruitment times vary across departments, but departmental data on recruitment and security vetting times are patchy and inconsistent, hindering efforts to understand how departments could speed up recruitment. As a first step, the Cabinet Office has set out how departments should measure recruitment times for civil service roles. But the challenge will be to make sure departments record and report recruitment times accurately, so that performance can be benchmarked with the aim of making recruitment faster. Recommendation 2: By the time of its Treasury Minute response, the Cabinet Office should require all departments to report data on recruitment times to it on a consistent and regular basis. It should use this information, along with data from external comparators, to establish benchmarks for recruitment times within the civil service.
Government Response Summary
The government states that consistent and comparable Civil Service recruitment measures, including time to hire and time to fill, have already been implemented across 17 departments. The first data set became available in April 2024 and will be reported quarterly for benchmarking to drive improvements.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented Consistent and comparable Civil Service recruitment measures have been implemented across the Whitehall 17 departments. These metrics are time to hire, time to fill, diversity of candidate, cost per hire, vacancy holder experience and candidate experience. The first data set became available during April 2024 and on a quarterly basis thereafter. Time to hire represents the time between the advertisement closing date and the date that the successful candidate is offered the post. This represents a candidate’s perspective of the selection process and provides the basis for reliable and fair external benchmarking closely aligned to researched industry interpretation of this measurement. Departments will also monitor the total time to fill a post. This extends beyond the time to hire to also measure time taken for any internal approvals processes that departments operate in order for a recruitment to commence and runs through to the arrival of the individual in post, taking account of pre-employment checks and security clearance. These metrics will enable effective benchmarking between departments, as well as external comparators, to drive improvements using a single standard. Once the new metrics are fully embedded, the Cabinet Office will introduce a set of recruitment standards, which will drive further consistency and improvements across Civil Service recruitment.