Magnox

The organisation will also be taking on ‘future missions’ in the shape of additional sites from 2025 onwards. Magnox has 2,500 employees across the UK and is a wholly owned subsidiary of the UK Government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Agency.

A change in mandate meant that the outlook for Magnox changed from an organisation in the process of winding down to a business that was growing in terms of scope and, consequently, staff. This change created several immediate challenges and accelerated the need to address some existing issues.

Attracting new talent and retaining existing personnel with specific skills in a competitive market was a key consideration for Magnox. Part of this could be addressed by improving recruitment and on-boarding processes. Other elements could be tackled by implementing a more sustainable approach to performance management by moving away from the existing paper-based performance management processes and increasing the focus on development and wellbeing. There was also a need to shift the mindset of the organisation away from time limited operations to a much longer-term outlook.

Magnox’s transformed mandate also meant some system changes would be needed, particularly around their existing Unit4 implementation, which had been in place for several years.

Hireserve integration

Specifically, Embridge provided an integration solution to support the implementation of the Hireserve ATS coupled with specialist change management knowledge and additional resource to the project.

The Hireserve ATS integration solution encompassed:

• User accounts – enables synchronisation of user records between Unit4 ERP and Hireserve ATS
• Vacancies – means the team can manage the ‘authority to recruit’ process within Unit4 ERP, using online forms and leveraging workflow and existing hierarchies or Delegation of Authorities to obtain approval, as well as pass mapped approved vacancy details across to Hireserve ATS, creating the vacancy in draft
• Applicants – automatically creates new resource records in the Unit4 ERP once pre-employment checks have been completed and a conditional offer accepted

Each part of the solution was set-up and configured in-line with Magnox’s requirements and the integrations are all provided on a monthly subscription basis.

Change Management

Working alongside the Magnox team, Embridge’s role was to help the organisation shape its thinking in regard to a new approach for performance management, understand the impact, and then design and co-deliver a change management plan to enable that change.

Using the Prosci Change Management best practice approach, Embridge helped analyse and understand the potential change, and identify success and adoption measures to monitor return on investment and the development of a change management plan. Early on, this work involved helping the Magnox project team to formulate, communicate, and share their ideas.

The beta testing gave us a sense not only of how employees would use the system, but also of the process, its potential pitfalls, and the value it might add.

Carina CareHR Regional Business Partner

In terms of the Hireserve deployment and subsequent integration, shortly after the deployment went live, Magnox was able to advertise 250 live job vacancies – a huge increase compared to the handful of roles that they previously advertised for their legacy systems.

Large scale efficiencies have been realised as a result of the new solution, including the time taken to advertise roles was cut from two weeks to two days thanks to reductions in manual work, including administration related to GDPR. The team are also now able to deal with a much larger volume of applicants.

It’s great rolling out a new application or a new system to the business, but if you don’t take people on the journey, it won’t be adopted properly. And you don’t get your return on investment as quickly as you would do if you did proper change management.

Mary KentHead of IT Programme Delivery