Staying people-first: Reed’s digital workplace transformation story

By Henry Lee, Head of Digital Workplace at Reed, with quotes from Paul Birkett, VP Strategic Portfolio Management at Ricoh Europe

Since 1960, Reed has been improving lives through work. Fast forward to 2024, and we are the largest family-run recruitment business in the world. With over 200 offices across the UK, we have built a reputation for prioritising people – whether that’s helping clients find the best talent, or ensuring our co-members (employees) have the best workplace experience possible, and are empowered to bring their best selves to their work.  

We’re also a business with purpose. We’ve helped hundreds of thousands of unemployed people across the UK find meaningful work through Reed in Partnership , guiding individuals who often find themselves under challenging circumstances to start working, develop their skills, improve their health and ultimately fulfill their potential.

Over the last five years, working habits have changed drastically. Like many businesses, we knew that if we wanted to retain our market-leading position and continue to support our purpose of improving lives through work, we needed an overhaul of our workplace technology. 

Tech as an enabler (and strategic asset)

Successful recruitment hinges on relationships and helping people to express their skills and personality. Having a human touch is pivotal. Historically, like many organisations and recruitment agencies, our core team would be in the office five days a week, grouped in teams and calling prospects from desk phones. Technology was necessary, but not one of the core elements of our business strategy. 

But as the market evolved, it became clear we needed to take a more innovative and flexible approach to our technology to retain our position in the market, and enable our co-members to reach their full potential with the support of the latest tech.

The roadmap for our transformation journey

Working with Ricoh, we formed a five-year plan in 2019 to modernise our technology stack and shed our technical debt. A significant move was “cutting the cord” from solely using desk phones and embracing a unified communications platform. This was the bedrock for us to offer hybrid working and was a real lifeline when the pandemic hit. As a result, we have seen a remarkable improvement in both employee satisfaction and productivity. Flexibility has been central to this; now our recruiters can contact prospects when it suits both themselves and their clients, working from the location that is most effective for them at the time to get the job done.

Reaching new heights, powered by tech

Our tech journey has helped drive some incredible business outcomes. Our people are of course our engine for growth and performance, but since we started our digital transformation journey, we’re become more profitable than we’ve ever been in our company’s history, closing the gap on and overtaking some of our competitors. At a people level, we have been able to stay true to our purpose in a changing working world. Through technology, our employees say they feel a much stronger sense of community within the company, with longstanding employees expressing that they feel more connected than ever before.

Learning from inevitable bumps in the road

Any organisations’ digital transformation journey involves key learnings, and we had a few. For example, when selecting laptop devices, we prioritised economy and value. Whilst largely okay, there was some low-level frustration at the level of performance when the machines were really pushed. We recognised this and took the decision to refresh our devices earlier than planned, moving to more premium and higher-performance laptops. 

In the modern world of hybrid work, a laptop is not only the tool used to do work, it effectively acts as a place of work, so accordingly it needs to provide a quality experience. Laptops are highly visible, tangible and personal to employees, and we found increasing our investment in these devices really paid off, increasing performance, satisfaction and retention.

Digital transformation is a journey – but stay critical, and don’t over rotate

However, on the other end of the scale, it’s easy for a business to reap the benefits of digital transformation, and then get carried away in continuing to add potentially superfluous tools. Reflecting on our own experiences, we would advise keeping a healthy level of skepticism to avoid tech sprawl, making sure your tech investments remain strategic. The end goal is always to ensure new deployments will provide continual value for your people.

At Reed, we believe that technological innovation, done right, is part of a solid foundation to creating a modern people-centric business. Digital transformation is also an ongoing journey, and while we’ve inevitably experienced the odd bump in the road on the way, we feel we’re firmly pointed in the right direction.

By carefully selecting our technology partner in Ricoh, we’ve felt continuously supported by their consultancy, as well as their problem-solving skills when we’ve been confronted with challenges. With this strong technological base, we’ve successfully been able to stay ahead of the market, while elevating our human potential and empowering our co-members.