CUSTOMER STORY: Prince’s Trust – Sterling Case Study

Prince’s Trust – Sterling Case Study

Helping people to get their lives on track

The Prince’s Trust is a charity in the United Kingdom founded by The Prince of Wales to help vulnerable young people get their lives on track. Over 1,100 permanent staff and 9,000 volunteers work together in the UK and around the world, to support those who are unemployed or struggling at school and facing exclusion to gain confidence, get a job or start a business.

We greatly appreciate the time that volunteers take to support an organisation like The Prince’s Trust and believe their onboarding experience should be as simple and straightforward as possible. We were delighted to work with The Prince’s Trust to create a smooth and robust background screening program that would help to ensure both employees and volunteers alike are able to start their valuable work sooner.
Steve Smith
EMEA Managing Director, Sterling
Moving away from a labour-intensive screening process

As a high-profile organisation within the charity sector, a robust background checking program is a critical ‘must have’ for The Prince’s Trust. Before partnering with Sterling, screening processes were labour intensive and often spread across multiple people, departments and external vendors. An in-house team were requesting character references for volunteers and employment references for their permanent employees, which could take considerable time.

A screening partner that understands the charity sector

A strong presence within the charity sector, along with a solid understanding of the specific needs of hiring programs of not-for-profit organisations of all sizes, was key to Sterling’s selection. Charities have several niche requirements and high-profile brands in particular can have a great deal at stake if a bad hire were to slip through the net, but Sterling’s experience offered considerable reassurance.

The team at Sterling carefully took the time to understand our needs and worked with us diligently to develop a consistent and compliant background screening programme, providing a greater experience for both our candidates and our HR staff.
Julia Wilkes
Head of HR Services, Prince’s Trust
Where being ‘global’ means being ‘local’

As a truly global provider, Sterling was not only able to provide international HR compliance peace of mind, but regional expertise that could also ensure faster turnaround times.

Integrating systems and sharing expertise

As part of their desire to improve the efficiency of managing the hiring processes, The Prince’s Trust were looking for a screening program that would integrate with the SuccessFactors HCM system. Sterling’s team quickly got to work scoping out what was needed for this integration, identified challenges and developed the necessary solutions to ensure this integration was rolled out effectively. Custom reporting was key for the Prince’s Trust and Sterling worked with them to define and scope the data needed.

This consultative approach, along with the ability to listen, question, guide and adapt was key to Sterling’s selection. It was also a precursor to the collaboration on process improvement that has been a strong feature of the successful partnership between Sterling and The Prince’s Trust.

Delivering transformational change

Supporting the Prince’s Trust with their background checking process involved months of consultation and planning, and the collaborative approach resulted in a screening programme that is simpler to manage while also being more consistent and robust. Having the process fully integrated with The Prince’s Trust’s recruitment module, means that it takes less than a minute to set up and initiate the checking process, providing the smooth candidate and client experience which was previously lacking.

By removing much of the manual process and reducing the number of individuals and vendors involved, checks are now carried out in a simpler manner with turnaround times significantly reduced. As a direct result, the Prince’s Trust team now have more bandwidth to focus on other pressing HR priorities.

Sterling and The Prince’s Trust will continue working together to further automate and streamline processes and, in partnership with the wider Client Advisory Board, will help to ensure such changes made also benefit other organisations.

Sterling looks forward to supporting the hiring program at the Prince’s Trust and enhancing this further with rechecks throughout the employee and volunteer lifecycle, helping them to help others get their lives on track for many years to come.

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