Thought Leadership Debate at Old Trafford
The second Thought Leadership Debate at Old Trafford, Manchester continued the success of the first. Attendees included procurement professionals spanning the public and private sectors, manufacturing and service organisations.
Have your say on the topics by clicking here and completing our comment box. A full write-up of the event can be read in the 15 November issue of Supply Management
Recruiting, retaining and developing talent in procurement is one of the biggest challenges we face. Good salaries aren’t always enough to keep people.
What else can we offer to improve retention?
- If people are moving through, you change the whole image of a purchasing department. You start to attract people from sales and HR and export them where they become your ambassadors.
- I think we need two types of purchasing people: ‘lifers’ who’ve gone into purchasing and are going to stay there, and the people who are passing through.
- Retention is massively important. We’re enjoying quite a bit of growth at the moment and it feels like we’re permanently recruiting, which is expensive and time-consuming.
- A lot of our staff work around the country or in Europe at client locations and we lost a few people because they didn’t feel engaged. We now make a point of visiting them on-site and we have also launched an intranet site, which has helped a lot.
What can we do to improve recruitment?
- We run a graduate scheme. One message that gets through is that there is no better grounding than an area like purchasing, because it touches so many other parts of the business.
- For example, one of my guys came up with an idea and said: ‘It’s totally out of my area, but I was talking to a supplier and they’ve got this solution.’
- The clients said it sounded quite smart, and that they’d do it. This guy wasn’t in sales or marketing or product development – he was a buyer at ground level.
- Some of these challenges are not unique to procurement. There’s an image issue here – the procurement brand needs some work. It’s about highlighting the career opportunities here. We have globalisation, international opportunities, emerging Asian economies and prices going down – it’s a very strategic role to play.
- You need people with general business skills, high emotional intelligence and the ability to interact across departments.
Are professional qualifications alone enough or is a broader skill set required?
- You need broader skill sets, but you’re losing technical procurement and supply chain expertise. Lifers aren’t going to last forever and if you’re only training people for two or three years then moving them, those technical competencies are not going to be there. You’re diluting the profession and its ability to contribute to the organisation’s financial standing.
Should procurement do more to sell itself and therefore retain and attract more people?
- There’s a reluctance in purchasing to admit that some other function, such as engineering, can do a better job.
- Purchasing has to look at itself more like legal. Legal has accountability across the company and accepts that people are making contracts that a lawyer can’t always be part of, but they know how to communicate the required skills to the groups involved. Purchasing could have the same influence without hands-on control, but it doesn’t often accept that.
- The onus is on procurement to market itself internally. The first thing you have to do is deliver and show the impact of your work to stakeholders. Then you have to develop your brand. You also have to tell them about the risks involved in procurement.
- How prepared are they, for example, to face legal challenges? How do they keep abreast of EU law? These are all risks people need to be aware of.
Do we know what we are actually looking for recruitment-wise. And where to look for it?
- We’ve got to be broader, more business-focused. The functional competencies that come from CIPS are not unique to procurement; 80% are crossed over from other functions.
- You have supply chain management, supplier relationships, project management – every department does that. We’ve got to be adding something different and looking at ourselves as not only procurement people, but as business people.
Imagine you’re in a room with every undergraduate in the UK. What would your message be?
- Aren’t we our own worst enemies? Procurement is fast-moving, developing all the time and what you learnt yesterday is not relevant tomorrow. Why aren’t we promoting that to the young? Who else is offering that? Yes, everyone else can function in their own right, but we can help them make the difference.
Do we need to think more widely about who would make good buyers to help meet demand?
- It’s extraordinarily hard for people to buy complex services like professional services if that’s not their background. It’s much easier to buy stationery or brake pads for a car than legal services or business process outsourcing.
On the issue of Generation Y: Are we keeping up with potential recruits’ expectations particularly in terms of an organisation’s reputation and social conscience?
- I get really concerned about this. I think it’s in danger of becoming a major distraction. If purchasing spots an opportunity for the organisation to become greener and market itself better as a result, or raise its share price, and reports it to the executive who signs it off, then it’s valid.
- It is not valid for purchasing to suddenly decide it is the green conscience of the company.
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