Outsourcing your HR: The benefits

Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) can provide companies with a flexible, scalable solution to the kind of business problems that HR professionals are increasingly being asked to deal with, says Nick Boothroyd.

Finding and recruiting (not to mention keeping) good people has always been an interesting challenge for HR departments. But when the board wants an organisation to change quickly, by launching a new division perhaps or opening another office, the demands of such a high-volume recruitment requirement can be just too much for an in-house team - which is where outsourcing comes in.

Although a relatively new concept, outsourcing is a route which is increasingly being used by companies to complement their HR departments. RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) can be a useful tool for HR professionals to call upon, as it means that you can 'switch on' a whole raft of services to meet a short term demand – although some companies use RPO on a long-term basis and scale the service up and down as their requirements change.