Talent acquisition data strategy optimizes hiring at Sanofi

Challenges

Sanofi talent acquisition missing standards

Peter Greco joined Sanofi, a global biopharmaceutical company, in 2017. The former Senior Director of Global TA Services and Operations faced a challenge: reporting was decentralized and limited based on the reporting functionality of the ATS.

Once the company defined standard global metrics with consideration for local needs, it brought data from the ATS and other recruiting systems into a centralized business intelligence tool. "We now have the ability to look at these numbers and can easily compare the insights across the organization,” said Greco.

Solutions

Dashboards & benchmarking for talent acquisition data

Role-level drillable dashboards have been a huge enabler, according to Greco. "The tool tells the story in a very easy way," he said. "We have the capability to easily drill down from a macro view right to the business unit, or even the hiring manager and recruiter view within a few clicks." The Sanofi talent acquisition team now spends more time enabling the business with insights rather than just providing top level reports.

The reporting cadence of weekly reports, monthly operational meetings, and quarterly business reviews created consistency and alignment within talent acquisition and the business. "We use the data to drive meaningful and actionable conversations," said Greco.

Reducing time to hire is an area where data proved to be instrumental in aligning the organization. "We have a nice visual representation of the days spent in each step throughout the recruiting cycle," he said.

Reports revealed that the offer stage, at 20 days, was far too slow compared to benchmarks provided by the company’s Recruitment Process Outsourcing partner, Cielo. "In a competitive market, it’s important to ensure we can work as quickly and efficiently as possible without the risk of losing great talent,” said Greco. "It was a valid business case to change behaviors of managers, HR partners, and TA."

Analytics and insights have enabled the TA team at Sanofi to present data with the same rigor that life sciences business leaders use in their work, further setting course for organizational change. When presenting at a recent business QBR, some expressed concerns about the length of time it took to land talent.

“Our analytics and insights allowed us to quickly identify the bottlenecks and challenges in the process which resulted in a meaningful conversation with actionable outcomes,” said Greco. “We continue to leverage data and insights as an entry point to our conversations with the business.”

Results

Refreshed talent acquisition reporting = radiant results

In less than two years, Sanofi reduced time to fill by an average of 5%, decreased agency spend from 8% to less than 1%, and significantly improved both hiring manager and candidate satisfaction.

The successful use of reporting and analytics to drive incremental changes at Sanofi has increased the need for insights significantly. "The before and after is completely different," said Greco.

A company-wide cost savings initiative has put several items on the analytics roadmap: a closer look at ad spending, usage of contingent labor, managed service provider spending, the succession gap, retention, and the internal talent marketplace. With these ambitions, in two years it can be expected that talent acquisition landscape will once again transform at Sanofi.