Case Study: Iceland halves time-to-hire and modernises recruitment with Kallidus Recruit

How Iceland has transformed its recruitment process and halved recruitment timescales

Iceland, the UK’s leader in frozen food with over £2.7 billion in sales, 22,000+ employees and 900+ stores, had relied on a head-office ATS and largely manual, paper-based store recruitment. Faced with seasonal peaks that overwhelmed store managers and a desire to bring processes up to date (and GDPR-compliant), the business set out to modernise recruitment across the entire estate.

Iceland selected Kallidus Recruit, going live for head-office hiring in June 2017 and rolling a simplified store version to 900+ stores in September 2017; around 2,000 store users now access the system by desktop or mobile. The change has halved time-to-hire (from 6–8 weeks to 3–4 weeks), increased applicants per role from 5–10 to ~40 in the first two weeks, and enabled handling of 163,000 seasonal applicants with 2,954 offers accepted. Integrations (NSL Right to Work checks), improved data security, and planned links to the personnel system are also delivering further efficiency—projected savings of over 100 working days a year in admin time.

Iceland

John Crossland

Retail Recruitment Manager