In this instalment of Lifting the Lid on Reed Talent Solutions (RTS), we caught up with Megan Metcalfe-Roberts, Account Director in RTS for Reed’s Northern based Local Authorities. Meg looks after a portfolio of over 20 public sector clients, predominantly local authority based. As there are so many diverse accounts and clients that RTS work with, we discover what does it mean to work with Reed’s Northern local authorities.

“The Northern Greats’ as I have fondly re named our Hub, is full of talented and hard-working individuals led by an ambitious management team. We have 9 service driven and consultative Recruitment Business Partners, who provide the day-to-day interactions with the hiring manger community, Reed offices and suppliers to ensure we deliver on our promises on fill rates, compliance, continuous innovation, and social values. In addition, over the past 2 years the Greater Manchester direct sourcing team are aligned to account management, and we have jointly grown our fill rates and expanded into new niche areas, and importantly helping provide solutions to our clients varying needs. This included absorbing a Local Authority in house recruitment team of 4 into our natural workload and registering of 120+ candidates in 3 weeks.

To give you a flavour of the size, we manage on average 950 starters a month, working on approximately over 348 jobs a month. We coordinate over 1,500 shifts a week. We have also reached a new peak of 4,350 workers in January 2024 and maintained a 97% fill rate. These roles vary from Chief Executives to refuse assistants, social workers to finance business partners.

Day to day activities can range from hosting job briefing calls, weekly and monthly service review meetings with our clients, benchmarking, and market insights, researching and volunteering in the community, hosting supplier review meetings, target setting and collaboration with Reed branches. Alongside all the coordination needed to successfully process all our clients’ requirements.

My role is overseeing all the above activity, whilst ensuring we are well positioned to ensure our client is receiving the solution, they require so we can crucially retain and develop our business. From tricky supplier negotiations, to tackling off contract with procurement and HR stakeholders, to a 9-month preparation to help facilitate the Greater Manchester Pledge about price caps for children’s social workers across the Greater Manchester Combined Authorities. There is never a dull day in my job and continuous improvement, service and delivery are the foundations of our operation.”

Can you share how you progressed in your career within Reed and how you felt supported doing this?

“I joined Reed back on September 21st, 2008, amid a UK recession, as an eager Permanent Consultant in the Local Sheffield business support office, eventually taking on both temporary and permanent desks. I successfully completed the management academy (fast track management training programme) which cemented my desire to gain a management post. My training and development has been supported throughout my career at Reed. By 2012 I gained my first opportunity as a Business Manager to run the Stockport branch, and then I landed my dream job of Business Manager back in Sheffield in 2015. As a team we achieved “best evers”, worked with some amazing consultants, progressed to Executive Business Manager, won, and retained some wonderful profitable clients to work with. Throughout this time, I was also involved in the supply side of Sheffield City Council that was run by RTS and was incredibly committed to ensuring excellent delivery and service.”

Reed has an open culture of internal mobility, how did you find the move from Reed Specialist Recruitment to RTS?

“I had an incredible nearly 10-year journey in RSR that developed my stakeholder management, recruitment, and problem-solving skills. I had achieved the goals I set myself within RSR and was ready for a change that happened to coincide with the opportunity of Account Manager for Sheffield City Council and the City of Doncaster Council. It was a sideways move, but harnessed my skill set, passion for delivering excellence to our clients and reinvigorated me. I have never looked back since, RTS provides the setting for my skills and passion to flourish, and I have been able to follow a similar career progression trajectory and was promoted to Account Director two years ago. In addition, I am proudly the RTS Lead in Social Values, and I have recently expanded my local authority portfolio.”

“As RTS evolves to provide solutions to our client’s complex challenges so in turn does the team that support function.”

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At RTS commitment to social values is deeply ingrained in their ethos. Key aspects that highlight this are corporate responsibility, social impact, philanthropy and sustainability and giving back. Here’s how meg and her team give back to their local community:

“Delivering on social values in our local community is something that every co-member is invested in and helps support. As a team, we focus on 4 key themes to ensure we are making a positive impact.

  • Help in the Community
  • Supporting Local and National Charities
  • Providing career insights and aspirations
  • Increasing employment levels.

Last year, I am proud to announce that the Greater Manchester, Sheffield account management and direct sourcing team volunteered 202 hours in 2023 across those 4 key themes.

53.5 hours providing support to unemployed people through career mentoring, mock interviews, and CV advice. 37 hours helping to get young people back into work. We delivered 56 hour delivering career talks and CV advise to schools and colleges. We also donated 55.5 hours to support our local community projects from decorating community centres to help pack hampers for those suffering bereavement, family breakdown or loneliness.

A lot of our activities derive from understanding the priorities of our clients. This Christmas, the cost-of-living crisis severely affected the ability to be able to provide gifts for care leavers or children in care. Alongside our supply chain we generated over £1000 in toys and amazon vouchers to be distributed to children at Salford, Tameside, Manchester, and Bolton. We even spent a delightful morning wrapping the presents with the foster careers.

We have also helped over 250 candidates who were previously unemployed for 3 months gain a temporary role, which ties brilliant into the wider RTS goal of working together to improve lives.

I am very excited for 2024 social value activities. 5 of the Sheffield team have signed up to be mentors to young people in Sheffield as they develop their skills between Year 9 and Year 11. My first session with my spiderman mentee was rock climbing, and the session was based on positivity. I would like to call this session reverse mentoring, as he climbed alongside me getting me higher than I would ever have I imagined. Confident, I will be able to return the favour, when we develop the skills on communication and workplace insights. Also very excited to cheer on Sheffield Eagles, wheelchair rugby team as we have sponsored a player and been a long-term supporter of their Learning and Development team.”

We always welcoming hearing from talent individuals looking to join our team, if it’s something you are considering then think about if these qualities resonate with you!

“Someone who can fully embrace our philosophy of “Better Never Stops”, being unafraid to work hard and embrace new challenges and solutions. Alongside, passion. Passion to deliver the best service to our clients.”

If this sounds like you and you are interested in a dynamic, exciting and varied career in Reed Talent Solutions, click here to see the current available vacancies.

By Natasha Chan

Attraction & Engagement Specialist