Arup
The Challenge
Arup is a global firm of consulting engineers, designers, planners and project managers. During a recent restructuring, it made 140 of its London staff positions redundant. As an employer that has always gone the extra mile to “take care” of its staff from entry to exit, Arup has forged an ongoing relationship with Cepec Career Management to provide its outgoing employees with the highest quality outplacement services. Cepec accepted the challenge to create a “hi-tech, hi-touch” solution for these professional clients.
The Solution
As a crucial part of its outplacement programme, Cepec complements its flagship 1-to-1 consulting sessions and specialist workshops for transitioning employees with access to EmploymentTalk™. This is the trademark online career transition solution supplied by Insala, a leading global provider of web-based software for organisations implementing career transition and talent management initiatives. Through its range of tools, featuring access to a step-by-step guide to effective job search, thousands of targeted job leads from diverse sources, networking tools, and more, EmploymentTalk™ helps transitioning individuals launch efficient and successful job search campaigns.
“EmploymentTalk™ adds dimension to our consulting services from both the administration and client sides,” says Jane Lea, Director of Cepec. “What makes a huge difference to us is EmploymentTalk™’s extensive back office capability, which enables myself and our consultants to provide top-quality reporting and remain in close contact with clients.”
“When clients log on to EmploymentTalk™, they immediately see a list of workshops available, and can easily register for them online as they see fit. This ease and flexibility of registration in turn enables us to deliver more support to more people. Since we began our outplacement programme for Arup’s employees at the beginning of April, we’ve increased our monthly group workshop delivery rate by 70%!”
The Outcomes
According to one happily resettled individual: “CEPEC’s workshops are invaluable for professionals in transition, especially those looking to start their own businesses or shift careers. The workshops’ usefulness comes from not only the information imparted by experts, but also the interaction with other attendees, which enables everyone to benefit from others’ perspectives, while group and individual exercises further challenge the participants to think about their propositions.
“Programme feedback has been excellent so far,” says Clive Reeder, Senior HR Manager at Arup. “Despite tough job market conditions, more than half of those outplaced were resettled in a record 10 weeks, well surpassing the average time to resettlement. Those who set themselves up as consultants are already generating revenue and building strong networks with former colleagues. Others are proactively re-training in diverse subjects, ranging from horticulture to sound and film engineering.”