Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 9
9
Accepted
Inconsistent recruitment time data collection across departments impairs effective civil service benchmarking.
Conclusion
The Cabinet Office acknowledged that departments did not collect consistent and comparable data on how long it takes to recruit and vet candidates.16 The Cabinet Office told us it is working to improve the understanding of recruitment times across the civil 8 Cabinet Office, Civil Service statistics: 2019, 24 July 2019; Cabinet Office, Civil Service statistics: 2023, 2 August 2023 9 Qq10, 15 10 Qq29, 31 11 Q97 12 C&AG’s Report, para 2.4 13 Q10 14 Q12; C&AG’s Report, paras 10–11 15 Q12 16 Q13; C&AG’s Report, paras 2.4, 2.8 10 Civil service workforce: Recruitment, pay and performance management service, including by setting common metrics for time to hire and time to fill that should result in more consistent, better-quality data that can be used to benchmark departmental performance.17 However, the People Plan states that its recruitment time metrics will only be reported for departments that are Government Recruitment Service customers, rather than all departments, which reduces the completeness of benchmarking that can be done and hence its usefulness.18 Recruitment costs and efficiency
Government Response Summary
The government agrees and states the recommendation is implemented, confirming that consistent 'time to hire' and 'time to fill' metrics have been implemented across 17 Whitehall departments, with data available quarterly from April 2024 for benchmarking.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
2.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 2.2 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. 2.3 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. 2.4 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. 2.5 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.