Having announced recent changes to its executive board, recruitment specialists Nicholas Associates Group is now strengthening the structure of its Stafforce brand, following the promotion of Alison Cook to operations director.
Currently head of the Stafforce Managed Services brand, Alison will now take much wider operational responsibilities with the long term goal of aligning the internal processes, client delivery and the candidate experiences of the Stafforce Branch Network and Managed Services brands.
Typically, a managed services client will have a high volume requirement for temporary and permanent employees, particularly during peaks in seasonal demand. In order to plan strategically, workforce planning is contracted out entirely to a Stafforce Managed Services Account Team who work in-house and deal with everything from forecasting, payroll, HR and recruitment requirements.
Alison is well placed to understand both brands having started her career at Stafforce in 2005 in the Hull branch. Over the last 16 years she has steadily progressed from being a branch manager, growing the team from 4 to 10, before her appointment as senior branch manager in 2009 responsible for multiple branches across Humberside increasing the branch overall performance by 600 per cent. She became head of Stafforce Managed Services in 2018 as a result of her knowledge, passion for customer service and ability to increase the client base.
It is this combined experience of branch and onsite services, her performance successes and her understanding of the trends in the future labour market that have led to her promotion.
“The UK is currently experiencing some major challenges in the labour pool,” said Alison. “Brexit has impacted the number of migrant workers in the UK and there are likely to be redundancies in the hospitality, leisure and retail sectors. It is vital that we re-position the industries we represent so that opportunities in food, manufacturing and engineering are seen as an attractive long term career choice and attract this highly skilled talent pool. Our aim is to position our clients as employers of choice and help people to retrain or transfer skills so that our vacancies are filled with the right people.”
Alison will continue to report to managing director of Stafforce Tony Boorman, who also leads the Stafforce business at Board level on a day to day basis.
