Over the past five years or so procurement has become more involved in the public sectors’ recruitment process. It is debatable whether this shift has been embraced by HR as a function. To what extent does animosity between the HR and procurement functions remain and has procurement helped enhance the recruitment process? Is there a need for procurement professionals to be involved at a more strategic level and do they have the necessary skills?

In the early stages of its involvement in the recruitment process, procurement was initially able to demonstrate its value add to HR by handling the contractual details of their organisations’ involvement in government frameworks. At the time this appeared to be the logical way forward because HR’s expertise lies with recruitment itself whereas procurement’s skill is in evaluating and negotiating with suppliers and maximising value from contracts.

Of late HR seems to have maintained responsibility for employer branding and recruitment of permanent staff into the public sector whereas procurement has taken on the more transactional side of recruitment – that of hiring temporary staff. But with the public sector needing to cut costs in the near future, should procurement become more involved in recruitment on a more strategic level?

On a strategic level one would expect that procurement professionals should assume more responsibility for a supplier over the entire duration of the contract. By ensuring that government departments continue to receive value for money, procurement teams should look to forge close working partnerships with suppliers to help them improve their service and deliver genuine added value to the relationship.

It could be argued that senior management within some government departments need to give procurement staff more authority to influence purchasing requirements that were not previously within their remit. What’s not clear is whether procurement professionals have the requisite skills and experience to operate at a strategic level for the acquisition of recruitment services. However it is worth noting that some government departments have successfully brought in strategic procurement expertise from the private sector.

Procurement professionals need to clearly demonstrate to the organisation how and where they have added and will add value to the process of acquiring products and services. Where procurement staff lack these strategic level skills, they need to obtain the necessary training to better equip them to operate at a higher level.

With this in mind the Office for Government Commerce (OGC) has compiled a guide to how government departments can promote skills through public procurement with programmes such as Train to Gain and apprenticeships. However it remains to be seen whether these programmes will help deliver personnel at the right level to operate at a strategic level to deal with recruitment services contracts.