Through the innovation of JH Fenner and Hopkins Bros. & Odlum, the company\u2019s manufacturing history goes back over 150 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Fenner Group itself was founded in 1861 by Joseph Henry Fenner in Hull, England. The company initially manufactured leather belting for use in power transmission, lacing and hoses, including fire hoses. With operations spread across the world, Fenner Dunlop is a recognised world leader in reinforced polymer technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through organic growth and strategic acquisitions, the company continues to innovate and find new ways to deliver higher productivity and lower costs to mining and industrial businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2018, Fenner PLC was acquired and became part of Michelin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their Australian operation has over 1,000 employees, driven by a passion to make conveying safer, more reliable and cost-effective for its customers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The biggest recruitment challenge for Fenner Dunlop has been speed. \u201cWe have 75 open positions at the moment and we\u2019ve been averaging between 60 and 90 open positions for the last 18 to 24 months,\u201d said Frank Spina, the company\u2019s National HR manager. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With Fenner having specialised trade and industry roles, it can be difficult to find suitable people. So when you find the right candidate you need to move quickly. Fortunately, they have their own registered training organisation that helps develop and build talent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company is also looking to employ 60 trainees who would go through the program and eventually become qualified Conveyor System Technicians . \u201cWe try and grow organically as well as externally,\u201d Frank added. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Frank began working for Fenner Dunlop in June 2011 the company didn\u2019t have a WIP (work in progress) for open positions. Work requests for hiring were managed at an individual business, hiring manager level,. \u201cThere was no clear view of the work task or workload or what the priorities were. Strategically what should we be doing first, second or third, in order to prioritise the work demands?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That became his first task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He soon realised that a spreadsheet wasn\u2019t going to cut it because of the workload. \u201cWe started looking for a talent management system that would enable us to get better at reducing the administrative and repetitive tasks associated with recruitment and which would create a better experience for our candidates when they applied for a position with us.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are several stages to a Fenner Dunlop application, with a great deal of verification needed throughout the process. \u201cThis has now become more common across many industries as customers also want verification that your employees are competent when they are working on mine sites. Skills tests and assessments to check and validate trade skills were completed manually,\u201d Frank said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This meant they ended up with a lot of paperwork for every candidate they looked to hire, which \u201cwas quite inefficient,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we went on a search for a system that would enable us to manage the process a little better and cut out a lot of the non value-adding tasks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fenner Dunlop looked at the main players when it came to selecting an ATS, but found that most of them were \u201ca very heavy solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHeavy in the way of investment, implementation and project management and ongoing maintenance,\u201d Frank explained. They were just about to sign with a vendor, when one of his team members said \u2018look, I was just on the internet and found JobAdder.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe fact that it was a very light solution that didn\u2019t need space on our servers or any IP infrastructure \u2013 that was a big selling point for us,\u201d Frank said. \u201cIt just did what it had to do without being over-engineered and heavy. So for us to find a solution that could help us straight away quickly\u2026JobAdder did that.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Frank spoke about the platform\u2019s practicality and functionality which was \u201ceasy, from a usability point of view and could handle the volume.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJobAdder didn\u2019t require an investment in time to manage and monitor applications, user numbers, licences etc., and you don\u2019t have to worry about the database size, it\u2019s set and forget.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once Fenner Dunlop made their selection, the overall process from approval, implementation to testing took less than a month. \u201cWe were fortunate,\u201d said Frank, \u201conce we loaded all our job templates it was pretty easy for us because we were starting from scratch. So we didn\u2019t have a lot of migration issues or integration issues.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With roughly five to six users of the platform \u2013 three being heavy users, they found the system intuitive, especially with the training support and help offered by JobAdder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been able to tweak things, and we keep getting more efficient through our processes,\u201d said Frank. \u201cJobAdder enabled some of these changes \u2013 it\u2019s created and given us a baseline that we can launch from and keep improving the way we recruit and engage our candidates, allowing us to become even more effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no way we would have been able to manage the volume of hiring requests without having a system like JobAdder in place. It\u2019s a solution that enables us to get it done and support the business during the recent uplift in the cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Integrations such as HelloSign have \u201csped things up for us and made it more engaging and easier for our candidates. We\u2019ve been able to eliminate a clunky step in the process for our candidates especially because a lot of our candidates work in remote regional areas where printing and scanning facilities may not be available. It also helps save a few trees eliminating the need to have paper contracts.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
JobAdder has enabled Fenner Dunlop to engage with their candidates providing a better experience. \u201cJobAdder makes it easy to engage our candidates and keep them up to date with where they are in the process. It has simplified and made it very easy to stay connected with our candidates. The TA team loves how much easier it is to engage not only our candidates but also other key stakeholders such as hiring managers,\u201d said Frank. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He described the platform as \u201ca practical solution, that is easy to use and good value.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not anything more than you need. Some solutions in the market have features that are nice to have but you don\u2019t really need. If you really want to strip JobAdder back, it does what it says it does, and it does it well.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before JobAdder, candidate experience was a \u201chit and miss\u2026you had to go and manually email every candidate. Now we have automated this and every candidate gets a response when they submit an application which is personalised and tailored.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
By keeping notes on the system, and responding to each candidate, Frank has found JobAdder to encourage the TA team to \u201cbe better in talent acquisition from a candidate management and experience point of view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re using a lot of animated videos now instead of text and paper. We are exploring using video ads. Social media is going to play a big part in our future marketing, and our Employee Value Proposition is going to change significantly,\u201d Frank explained. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fenner Dunlop is even looking at incorporating virtual reality into their recruitment mix. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn one case, [the candidate] can pick up a hammer and simulate hitting something with virtual reality, and that\u2019ll be assessed. We can measure how long it takes, whether they followed all the safety rules or whether they picked up the right tool,\u201d Frank explained. \u201cThe candidate can then do the assessment and you get an instant result. They get instant feedback, but we still want to have a human element to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTechnology is an enabler. But people ultimately don\u2019t have a relationship with an app, they have relationships with people. It is important we keep the human touch.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Through the innovation of JH Fenner and Hopkins Bros. & Odlum, the company\u2019s manufacturing history goes back over 150 years. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":411704,"template":"","bjm_industry_cat":[93],"bjm_features_cat":[],"bjm_user_type":[101],"bjm_location":[19],"bjm_employees_count":[105],"class_list":["post-417209","bjm_case_study","type-bjm_case_study","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","bjm_industry_cat-mining-and-resources","bjm_user_type-in-house","bjm_location-global","bjm_employees_count-501-1000"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobadder.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bjm_case_study\/417209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobadder.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bjm_case_study"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobadder.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bjm_case_study"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobadder.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobadder.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bjm_case_study\/417209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobadder.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobadder.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"bjm_industry_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobadder.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bjm_industry_cat?post=417209"},{"taxonomy":"bjm_features_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobadder.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bjm_features_cat?post=417209"},{"taxonomy":"bjm_user_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobadder.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bjm_user_type?post=417209"},{"taxonomy":"bjm_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobadder.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bjm_location?post=417209"},{"taxonomy":"bjm_employees_count","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobadder.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bjm_employees_count?post=417209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}