Human connection: the vital ingredient in your RPO relationship

For a TA or HR professional, bringing in a Recruitment Process Outsourcing partner (RPO) or Managed Service Provider (MSP) is a big decision. It’s a real leap of faith to invite someone into your organisation, to act on your behalf.

After all, to the outside world, their teams appear to be your employees, and representatives of your brand. There’s a lot riding on the decision internally, too. Choosing the team that can partner with you to drive innovation, manage risk, and deliver impressive results affects not only your organisation’s growth and reputation, but your own, too.

When you decide to take that leap of faith with an RPO partner, strong human connections built on trust are the key to delivering long-term success and impactful talent solutions. So what should you look for to ensure you choose a team that can drive those human connections effectively?

An attitude of empathy and respect

A good partner should understand that they are, effectively, ‘a guest in your house’. Yes, they will bring fresh perspectives and knowledge, so they can partner with you to drive innovation. But they should also be willing and able to slot into your particular business culture seamlessly. That means being flexible, and adapting to your values, ways of reporting, data protection protocols and hardware.

A structured, clear implementation process that drives mutual understanding and trust

The best partners will be looking to create and implement processes that are all about you – not merely a carbon copy of existing structures they’ve used elsewhere. That means listening closely and delivering bespoke solutions throughout the process.

• Planning: Where you’ll collaborate with your partner to build relationships, agree the implementation project plan including governance schedules and sign off on agreed deliverables and timelines in a clear plan.
• Discovery: Your partner should create an internal comms plan to bring everybody onboard and start cementing human connections. They should build out a stakeholder map, undertake workshops and from that work they will capture the “as is” situation which enables the next phase of the implementation.
• Design, Build, Test: This stage involves agreeing the nuts and bolts of the new “to be” processes including the enabling technology and making sure everybody understands and is on the same page. Agreed process flows are captured in operations manuals and preparatory work begins such as talent pipeline activity and testing technology where needed. Teams should be introduced widely to contacts throughout your organisation.

At every stage, human connection and relationship building should be optimised, to build trust, cohesion and collaboration.

Clear communication and feedback channels

During implementation communication is frequent and can continue as ongoing informal daily communication. This is complemented with more structured weekly, monthly and quarterly reporting meetings and reviews on agreed metrics. Both sides need to keep checking in on whether KPIs are being met, to keep progress on track.

Naturally, tailored IT systems, data and communication tools are important here. But again, it’s the human relationships that make sure the right information is getting to the right people at the right time, in a digestible and actionable form, to drive forward key goals. Continuous improvement relies on information being shared in a timely manner between collaborators who truly trust each other and want to work together.

Whether it's a quick check-in, offering support, or consistently delivering on promises - it's the small moments of communication and interaction that build lasting trust.

A proven track record of delivering human-centered success

Successful partnerships built on trust and strong interpersonal relationships last. They allow RPO partners to help you create and implement long-term strategy as well as short-term deliverables.

Does the RPO (and just as importantly, the individuals in the team who’ll be working with you) have experience of building such long-term connections through multi-year contracts? Can they evolve with you, to develop relationships and build teams across a global network? Do they have access to a wider professional services group, that can build on your success to deliver everything from change management and tech modernisation to customer experience delivery? Most importantly, can they show examples of strong relationship building in organisations like yours?

Trust is the most useful tool an RPO can harness. It helps increase transparency, manage risk, drive collaborative innovation, boost performance and fuel engagement. You can trust Morgan McKinley to build it.