Primat Recruitment: Small changes, big impact

Primat Recruitment: Small changes, big impact

What do Olympic athletes and a North Sea recruitment agency have in common? Marginal gains.

Cycling and oil and gas recruitment lack similarity, but they both have a shared drive to find improvements and efficiency.

Back in 2002, Sir Dave Brailsford became head of the British cycling team, which had almost no record of any success. Fast forward to 2008 and the team won seven out of 10 gold medals at the Beijing Olympics.

But this dramatic improvement wasn't due to dramatic changes. It was due to something much smaller. In 2012 Sir Dave Brailsford explained the idea of marginal gains to the BBC. He said:

“The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of, that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.”

Marginals gains for recruitment

Marginal gains are small incremental improvements in any process, which, when added together, make a significant improvement – or cost saving. But how is this relevant to oil and gas recruitment?

“By applying this theory and improving the overall recruitment process by 1%, we estimate that the industry can save £24 million on personnel per annum. The