Case Study: Sunderland City Council achieves £100 million in savings with SHL

Sunderland City Council worked with SHL to rethink its recruitment strategy and reduce costs

Sunderland City Council worked with SHL after facing a major challenge: continuing to deliver more than 700 public services to around 300,000 residents while cutting costs by £100 million over three years, without resorting to mass redundancies. To support this talent-led transformation, the council needed a better way to identify internal candidates for frontline vacancies and make the most of existing employee skills and potential, using SHL’s Talent Audit Solution.

SHL developed a single online assessment combining personality and ability tools, integrated with a job-matching system to create an internal jobs market. The solution was rolled out in three months and helped Sunderland City Council complete more than 4,500 questionnaires, fill over 2,000 jobs internally, and reduce staff by 2,500 while maintaining or improving service levels. The council also moved into the top 20% of UK organizations for employee engagement and continued working with SHL to pursue further savings.

Sunderland City Council

Dave Rippon

Head of Organizational Development