Supporting Luton’s residents with top quality talent

Luton Council is the local authority for Luton, a vibrant, super-diverse town and unitary authority in Bedfordshire, England. Comprised of more than 2,500 staff, all committed to improving the town and the lives of its 225,300 local residents.

The Council has a bold 2040 vision, which all its staff are fully behind and collectively working towards the shared town-wide vision of making Luton a healthy, fair and sustainable town where everyone can thrive, and no one has to live in poverty”. This is built around five key priorities:

Since launching its vision in 2020, the Council has been working to transform its town through new initiatives, developments, and projects. Notable achievements include being listed as the top UK destination for start-up businesses, and hosting the flagship Radio 1’s Big Weekend. Moreover, a recent peer challenge review by the Local Government Association (LGA), praised the council for its recent successes, describing the authority as “bold”, “ambitious”, and “trailblazing”, with a “well-embedded” 2040 vision.

As part of its journey to achieving its 2040 vision, Luton Council recognised the need to acquire high-quality permanent talent. Its dedication to recruitment is evidenced in the Council winning a PPMA award for Best Partnership / Collaboration in 2023, and for winning a gold award for the best entry across the entire event. With this in mind, Luton Council decided to partner with Cornerstone, re-implementing Cornerstone TalentLink after making the decision to transition to another platform for around 18 months in 2022. By reigniting its partnership with Cornerstone, the Council has been able to recruit quality talent, streamline recruitment and onboarding processes, as well as provide a seamless and easy-to-use experience for candidates and existing employees alike.

Luton Council originally implemented Cornerstone TalentLink in 2017 to help recruit first-rate talent and streamline onboarding – and the platform was well received by the team, with strong engagement. After five years with Cornerstone, the Council partnered with another vendor from August 2022-January 2024, wanting to experience what else was available on the market. The goal of this new partnership was to consolidate the Council’s HR systems and simplify the user experience. However, the new platform was cumbersome, forcing team members to resort to performing tasks manually. The system was also creating a disjointed candidate experience, impacting upon the Council’s ability to attract and hire new, quality talent. This all prompted the decision to reignite the partnership with Cornerstone. By re-introducing TalentLink, the Council sought to transform the candidate experience and reinstate the streamlined processes that the platform offered.

One of Luton Council’s key goals was to encourage contingent employees, who make up roughly 12% of the workforce, to become permanent members of its team. Whilst contingent workers are crucial in helping to bridge skills gaps and support with social and legal work, this reliance on external hiring has high associated costs, and was not sustainable in the long term. Whilst this issue of relying on contingency workers is common across all UK councils, Luton Council faced the additional challenge of competing with London for talent – in particular due to the area’s transport links directly to the capital. As such, the Council needed to offer an attractive employee proposition, and cultivate a positive employee experience, to encourage an increase in permanent talent.

Due to its previous implementation of Cornerstone TalentLink, Luton Council was able to conduct its re-implementation process smoothly, with minimal issues over a four-month period. Cornerstone was available to provide holistic, around the clock support, with rapid communication from its teams and tech support on hand to resolve and mitigate potential errors as they occurred. The TalentLink system went live on 9th January 2024.

Luton Council successfully trained new hiring managers to use TalentLink; in fact, 200 people were trained within the first two months, with sessions running twice weekly. The HR team also attended a Cornerstone networking event to discover tips and tricks on how to best leverage the system and maximise its value. As such, the authority successfully collaborated with Cornerstone to evolve its TalentLink solution from the first iteration. As a result, the Council was able to implement new features, such as payroll automation, to further support HR team members and streamline processes.

Cornerstone TalentLink has had a transformative impact on Luton Council’s recruitment. Its aim of creating an attractive employee value proposition has resulted in an enhanced candidate experience. There has also been an increase in hiring managers’ engagement with the platform – and, as the individuals responsible for driving candidate experiences, their enthusiasm is a huge win for the Council. Moreover, hiring managers now have a stronger overview of those applying for roles, and the TalentLink system leverages automated forms and processes, and a clear trail of compliance checks, to streamline application procedures. Overall, Luton Council’s return to TalentLink has played a strong role in significantly reducing its time to hire.

Luton Council has also experienced an increase in over 100 employees transitioning from contingency to permanent staff, and an uptick in sourcing permanent talent more broadly. The Council has since recruited two talent acquisition specialists and two resourcers to source permanent talent using the TalentLink system to support them through the process and enabling them to use the source module. Aside from the resulting cost saving benefits, the authority is now also less dependent on temporary workers, forging stronger employee connections with its permanent staff. This increase in permanent talent has also provided more consistency and stability to the Council’s workforce.

For existing employees, the reintroduction of TalentLink was hugely beneficial for streamlining and optimising processes. Now, the Council no longer needs to rely on manual processes, and it has been able to gain time back to focus on the tasks that require its expertise. In addition to this, the authority is better able to report and track against its KPIs with TalentLink. This has been crucial for the Council’s HR team, as it can provide in-depth and accurate reports – for instance, on time to hire – to share with leaders and stakeholders, and evidence its progress towards recruiting top talent.

Overall, Luton Council’s success with its recruitment has generated positive feedback top to bottom, with everyone from leaders to the hiring community highlighting the benefits of TalentLink. And these incredible results have reinstated the authority’s reputation for offering best-in-class experiences for employees and candidates, and for operating an effective recruitment platform.

Now, the Council is looking to the future and exploring how it can take its success even further. Its focus is shifting towards exploring how AI can be leveraged to support existing and prospective talent, and is continuing to build on its partnership with Cornerstone.

With over 200,000 residents in its care, Luton Council is now thriving in its journey to recruiting quality talent – and from here, the only way is up.