The Challenge
As the pandemic unfolded in 2020, Admiral put their teams first and decided to undertake an internal retraining of staff in order to lower redundancy rates. With many call centre workers unable to work from home, and without the need for as many staff due to advances in technology, Admiral wanted to prioritise employee wellbeing by enabling non-tech team members to retrain for roles within tech, which were far more secure throughout the pandemic. _nology offered the perfect solution – a way to gain tech team members without needing to make non-tech team members redundant.
A second challenge presented itself in 2021 – a distinct lack of highly-skilled Cloud Engineers. There has been an increasing demand for Cloud-trained technologists across the past 12-18 months, and Admiral had been struggling to find people with the necessary tech stack who would also contribute to their diverse culture. With the traditional transactional recruitment process not working for them, they came to us for a solution to the lack of diverse talent.
Characteristics of our solution
Due to our existing relationship with Admiral, there was a seamless transition from transactional recruitment to the bespoke retraining course we ran in partnership with them. We launched a retraining programme, taking 15 people from non-tech roles within Admiral and upskilling them before placing them into Software Testing and Software Engineering roles available in the company. There were so many individuals in non-tech teams that were very interested in technology, despite having little or no existing tech skills or experience.
All 15 individuals retrained by _nology thrived during the course, likely due to their passion and interest in pursuing a new, more secure role with Admiral. We ran a 12-week course, turning people with undiscovered potential into high-performing, job-ready technologists. These individuals were already loyal to Admiral, with great brand awareness and proven compatibility with the company culture. This made the transition much easier, as well as offering a cost-effective solution for Admiral.
In 2021, our continued relationship with Admiral led to a requirement for Cloud, DevOps, and Infrastructure experts to join their tech teams. Rather than focusing on a transactional recruitment model, we partnered with them to fill the roles through our _nology programme. Due to the huge industry demand, Admiral was struggling to find the right fit and were facing huge recruitment fees/ salaries. Rather than continue to look for talent, we decided to create it.
In conjunction with our recruitment partners, Opus Talent Solutions, we set up a talent pipeline model. We supply Admiral with job-ready Junior Engineers and Developers, trained through _nology, with high diversity levels thanks to having an unlimited pool of non-tech potential that can be trained up in the necessary tech stack. This model starts with an 18-month placement, with the intention to convert the juniors to full-time, permanent employees. For every 2 juniors we place, we also place a senior (sourced through Opus) to continue mentoring them over a 6-month upskilling period.
Following this model, in 2021, we placed 2 Junior Cloud Engineers with Admiral, along with a Senior Cloud Engineer to provide ongoing support across a 6-month period. Everything works in tandem, so juniors and senior start at the time, offering a complete, cohesive solution. These ‘pods’ of junior: senior combinations are time-saving, cost-effective, and enhance the existing company culture at Admiral by maintaining their values of ongoing support and diversity. This is a cost-saving, retention-fuelling model that ensures diversity is kept at the heart of Admiral’s hiring process, and offers a sustainable pipeline of talent.