Local government faces impossible financial pressure but cutting investment in recruitment capability increases costs everywhere else. Here’s why the smartest councils are taking a different approach.
Keep reading to learn:
- How cutting recruitment budgets increases costs elsewhere
- The hidden costs your budget can’t capture
- How recruitment efficiency protects frontline public services
- What three local authorities achieved by investing in smarter recruitment
- Why 1 in 7 local authorities have switched to Tribepad ATS
Cuts that cost: doing nothing isn’t a neutral decision
“We’ve got no budget right now”. That’s a familiar phrase for local government recruiters; one we’re hearing more and more in conversations at the moment. Especially with LGR roll-out on the horizon.
When budgets are under the microscope, every pound demands justification. Every investment competes with frontline services; every procurement decision is questioned.
So teams pause. Make do another year, with software from last century and everyone shouldering 10x the workload because they’re truly, madly, deeply passionate about the sector and the organisation and the communities you serve.
That might be laudable, but it’s also counterintuitive. It risks exacerbating problems with service delivery and setting organisations back years. Decades, even.
Yes, we need to be efficient. Yes, we need to be smart about where we spend. But reducing costs in the wrong places increases costs everywhere else. One of those wrong places is your core operational systems.
Let’s talk about that.
The perfect storm for local government recruiters
Councils are balancing rising demand for services, persistent workforce shortages, organisational change, increasing public expectations and long-term funding uncertainty, simultaneously.
Read more: Addressing public sector recruiters’ four biggest challenges
It’s what the Local Government Association call “the perfect storm”, seeing the cost of delivering council services increasing by almost 29% from 21/22 to 24/25 while real-terms spending power has been slashed 27% since 2010.
Councils work hard to protect budgets, transform services and capitalise on efficiencies – but unless something changes, councils face a funding gap of £4 billion over the next two years.
The cost of delivering council services has increased by almost 29% from 21/22 to 24/25 while real-terms spending power has been slashed 27% since 2010.
(LGA)
The situation is, as the National Audit Office puts it, “unsustainable”. But the problem is, this unsustainability risks pushing some councils (although with many notable exceptions, which we’ll talk about) into counterintuitive financial decision-making.
The balance sheet is a blunt instrument
Chasing the efficiency gods often translates into locking down costs. But that – good, common sense! – approach is more complex than it sounds.
Some areas are clearly cut-and-dried. Extravagant entertaining budgets? New MacBook Pros for everyone? But others are often treated like discretionary spend, when they really shouldn’t be.
This happens a lot in recruitment – often because teams are still struggling to shrug off the outdated recruitment-as-admin perception from a decade ago, which makes them a convenient place to cut, cut, cut.
After all, people costs are most organisations’ biggest line item.
The problem is, though, that the balance sheet is a blunt instrument.
- Advertising costs? On the spreadsheet.
- Salary costs? On the spreadsheet.
- Software costs? On the spreadsheet.
If you only look at the top-line, it makes sense to cut advertising spend, recruiter headcount and recruitment software costs.
But the reality is much more nuanced. What about the costs of…
- … missing candidates you already had in your ATS but couldn’t find?
- … duplicated, manual processes that waste days each week?
- … avoidable hiring process inefficiencies you just can’t see?
- … candidates dropping-out because you took too long or treated them poorly?
- … great people scrolling past your jobs because your brand doesn’t land?
- … critical roles staying open for too long, causing service disruption?
- … deepening service homogeneity because your processes create bias?
- … turnover climbing because existing teams are burnt-out and demoralised?
None of this stuff appears as a single line in a budget report. But they drain thousands of hours and tens – or hundreds – of thousands of pounds from councils each year.
Ignoring that reality while working harder and harder to eke out efficiencies in processes you’ve already wrung dry doesn’t make sense. And it won’t keep the wolves from the door.
Yes, every local government recruiter we’ve ever met is under pressure to do more with less. But we also need to be realistic.
There’s no point sitting around waiting for a miracle: you can’t feed the 5000 with two fish. And the longer we pretend we can – the longer we accept two fish becoming one fish becoming half a fish becoming fish bones – the faster our function starves.
Better recruitment means better service delivery
Recruitment efficiency isn’t (just) about making recruiters’ lives easier. Or even about cutting costs to make the purse-string-holders happy. It’s about protecting our most vital public services; enabling councils to continue delivering services despite shrinking resources.
Yes, making our lives easier is a welcome consequence. But the point isn’t us.
- It’s Jeanette, waiting three months for her social care assessment because the team’s been understaffed and overworked since forever.
- It’s Ahmed, whose planning application languishes in the queue because the council can’t recruit enough planning officers.
- It’s Margaret, sponge-bathing for months because she’s waiting on a wet-room installation because the occupational therapy team is short-staffed.
- It’s Becky, whose daughter won’t go to school because she’s having such a hard time but can’t get her SEND assessment.
And a million-and-one other examples. Every role that takes longer to fill is felt outside the organisation, in the communities you serve.
Approaching the recruitment efficiency mandate as a direct cost-cutting exercise without understanding this bigger picture is directly harming the people organisations seek to serve.
Yes, organisations need to be astute with spend. Of course. We’re not advocating for buying the most expensive, shiniest new thing on the market under the banner ‘spend to save’.
But improving recruitment efficiency means managers spend less time recruiting and more time leading teams to deliver better services.
It means recruiters spend time attracting and nurturing pipelines, not chasing documents. It means leaders have the data to spot bottlenecks before they become entrenched service problems. It means candidates complete processes instead of disappearing.
It means recruitment got better. Not just spent less to achieve the same poor results.
West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) are a great example. WNC’s Alison Golding and Jess Lyon joined us for episode 9 of The View, talking about how they’ve managed to walk the cost constraint tightrope while still building a high-functioning recruitment function.
Read: 8 real-world strategies to out-recruit the balance sheet from WNC
What happens when councils remove friction: 3 examples
Across local government, we’ve watched councils time and again transform recruitment by building systems that streamline friction and remove drag, not just asking recruiters to work harder.
Yes, securing budget can be an uphill struggle. But we’ve seen time and again, the decision to deploy best-in-class recruitment software that’s tailor-made for local government pays back dividends.
Read our public sector recruitment software buyer’s guide.
Here’s what three other local government organisations achieved with modern hiring software:
Staffordshire County Council:
- Fill rate doubled year-on-year
- 30% decrease in time-to-hire
- 113% increase in application volume
- 18% increase in completed application rate
- Achieved new hire NPS of 78/100
- Brand engagement increased 46%
Malvern Hills and Wychavon District Councils:
- Major uptick in application quality
- 100% increase in applications-per-role
- 75% decrease in time-to-offer – 16 weeks to 22 days
- 77% completion application rate over 900+ applications
- 1/3 faster onboarding and references
- 100% direct fill rate over 12-months
- Eliminated agency costs
Milton Keynes City Council:
- Slick, collaborative process that’s better for everyone
- Evidenced 47% ethnic minority hires
- Fully-integrated DBS checks
- Safer recruitment, Ofsted-approved
- An EVP and brand everyone’s proud of
- Incredible feedback from all angles
“Before, our recruitment policies were limited by what our system could achieve. With Tribepad it’s the other way around. The system can now guide our policy to some extent, because we have the flexibility to do whatever we need. I feel with Tribepad there’s nothing we couldn’t do. Even if the world completely changes again tomorrow.”
Workforce Policy & Projects Strategic Lead, Milton Keynes City Council
What these teams – and many others – have in common aren’t huge budgets (they wish!). It’s that they looked at the bigger picture. They understood that, yes, plasters are cheaper than stitches.
But eventually you’re bleeding so much the plaster won’t solve the problem, and ideally you need to realise that before the wound’s turned gangrenous to have any chance of positive recovery.
Or, put another way, there comes a point where making-do with your existing recruitment processes isn’t a sound financial decision. It’s whacking a plaster on an amputated leg and crossing your fingers.
Is outdated recruitment technology costing you more than you realise? Find out why 1 in 7 local authorities use Tribepad.
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Tribepad is the trusted tech ally to smart(er) recruiters everywhere. Combining ATS, CRM, assessment, video screening, compliance, onboarding, analytics and a fully-integrated AI assistant, our talent acquisition software is a springboard for fairer, faster, better recruitment for everyone.
B-Corp certified and multiple-award-winning (like Best ATS for Enterprises and Tech Company of the Year), Tribepad is trusted by 1 in 7 local authorities and local government organisations like London Councils, WME, Surrey County Council, Northumberland County Council and Kent County Council.
