2018 will always be a memorable year for WRS.

We moved offices, took on our biggest customer account to date and saw ourselves with a workload that we could never have anticipated. However, as well as several things going on in the WRS business, we found ourselves having to find a recruitment strategy that would see us having mass volume of staff, starting full time with us and with an immediate effect. As a company we appreciate that EPOS and specific software is such a niche market. Therefore, our key objective was to ensure we had the resources to train and induct them professionally and thoroughly throughout the busier period, as we would have with any other staff member. We also decided to find a suitable candidate we had to be open to what their accountabilities would be. We decided to be open to either EPOS and IT as a background and skill set or Customer Service. Hopefully encouraging more of a pool of people to apply that we can later train and develop to the WRS ethos.

Looking back, we were very fortunate to recruit in house with the help of a local recruitment agency on the Isle of Wight and that was very much it. We put out a local ad with the costing of £59, designated a member of staff to monitor and manage the applications and CV’s, and began screening what we were looking for.

Over the space of eight months, we placed our ad on the local forum four times and overall from each round we had numerous next stages, interviews and inductions, where we invited candidates that had been successful passed the interview to come in for a few hours and see what the job would entail. This proved a great success as it allowed people to see what WRS was like and who they would be working with. Also, to experience the work setting and put them at ease with any anxieties they may or may not have. We can appreciate in these current climates; nobody wants to leave a job they know for something they don’t and start again. The feedback was positive, so we ensured this was scheduled in with relevant departments the week after the interview to keep it fresh and to a timely fashion. The only challenge we found from this stage was finding the time for our current staff to time manage themselves to have new potential staff coming in to spend time with them, giving them a brief introduction to WRS.

Within eight months WRS had recruited an extra 16 people to their staff team, taking us to a team of 35. All staff have now been inducted and follow a training and development programme to encourage reviews quarterly which help us recognise new areas of their job they need to learn, tweaking when necessary. Every staff member is unique, where we find the time frames for each adapting as there is no pressure or milestone to be at by a specific timescale and stage.

The overall review from our Recruitment phase has been productive and worked well. Staff are developing in house, working as a team doing unsociable hours at times, within a fast-paced environment. We appreciate that it is not for everyone. However, with that as a reflective, we have only lost one member of the team where unfortunately it was decided I wasn’t for them.

WRS will continue to thrive with expansion with our staff team being one of the main objectives making it happen.