The failure of G4S, rather than one of competency, was one of recruitment policy. The security company has never claimed to be an expert in outsourcing, but rather is a specialist in outsourced business processes. G4S was never equipped to recruit 10,400 staff for the London Olympics. As much as its ability to manage its own sizeable network is admirable, the model of direct resourcing was tailored to a far smaller scale than was required for this contract. Unfortunately, such a policy is hopelessly ineffective when applied with no thought to scalability, as was the issue here.
G4S’s tried and trusted recruitment model was perfect for gradual, small-scale recruitment, but hopelessly flawed when applied to the unique challenges posed by high-volume, short-term hiring. The company’s drive to hire a significant number of new employees singularly failed to take into account the human element involved, where, with so many candidates being offered positions, inevitably some would face issues and barriers which would require support. The news that G4S failed to communicate with candidates, leading to confusion over whether they had actually successfully applied for the job, illustrates how completely the company failed to provide this support.
The government, Olympic and regulatory authorities regularly call on international outsource and facilities management companies such as G4S to coordinate complex, expensive and high-volume projects. A specialist recruitment company could have advised G4S that many factors need to be considered when evaluating such a high volume of candidates, such as the overlooked fact that they needed to capture many more applications for each job than they sought. This is the only way to ensure the right quantity of recruits, even before getting on to the issues of quality.
The ‘embarrassing shambles’ could easily have been avoided if the government, who seem to have largely escaped blame, had awarded the highly important contract to a company better equipped to fulfil its requirements. It begs the question, why was G4S ever expected to deliver by the government, and how exactly did they successfully tender? The first possibility that springs to mind in this age of austerity is that G4S was simply the lowest bidder.
Despite this error on the part of the government, G4S is ultimately culpable for either not realising that they were going to be unable to fulfil the contract early enough, or realising and not revealing it until it was too late. In either case, the best solution would have been for the security company to sub-contract some of the work, rather than depend on recruiting staff to make up the numbers.
Indeed, it would seem that the government has learned something from this experience, awarding the contract for the recruitment of staff at the 2014 Commonwealth Games to a specialist company called Search. In terms of lessons for G4S, if they are to recover their reputation and avoid losing out on future contracts they must set up a more malleable, adaptive recruitment plan that flexes with the size of the contracts it is awarded. They will also be aware going forward that issues of lesser significance when recruiting in small numbers, such as the human element involved, become magnified when attempting to hire thousands simultaneously. The unique challenges posed by short-term, high-volume recruitment can, as evidenced in this case, cause a crisis if not properly controlled.