Recruitment Tenders

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Bid Writing Support for Healthcare Recruitment Tenders

A recruitment company is aware of the strategies to easily meet needs and supply high quality, compliant staff for the NHS. What healthcare recruiters may struggle with is how to write winning bids.

We understand what is needed to craft a winning recruitment tender for the healthcare sector. We have a cohesive understanding of the needs of the NHS in current times coupled with our track record in recruitment tenders and are strongly positioned to support your business to submit a winning bid.

Our clients range from small start-up agencies to one of the largest recruitment groups in the UK. Whilst we are always on hand to provide expert advice and tender writing services for PSL and RPOs, the majority of our work focuses on securing awards on clinical and other public sector frameworks and large Managed Service Provider (MSP) contracts.

Clinical and Public Sector Framework Contract Agreements

K Low Consulting works with clients regularly to secure places on clinical and other public sector framework agreement contracts. Every framework contract varies from clinical national frameworks such as Workforce Alliance and HealthTrust Europe (HTE) to Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation (YPO) and ESPO.

Particularly, one of the main benefits of framework agreements, is that it provides a pre-approved procurement route for public sector organisations to contract services. This means that there is no need to repeat the initial procurement process. However, for providers this can mean where a framework is an established route to purchase, they can find themselves ‘locked-out’, and therefore inhibited by glass-ceiling imposed on their growth. For example, for NHS providers there are only three NHS England approved frameworks. If a provider is unable to obtain a place on one of these, they may find that NHS hospitals that want to work with them are unable to. As such, framework agreements are usually closed to new providers for 2-5 years, it is often business critical for providers to successfully bid.

Our Track Record in Recruitment Tenders

Our team are fully versed and have 100% success of bidding for contract procurements ran by the three of the main NHS England approved providers of clinical frameworks for temporary staff:

Crown Commercial Services (CCS)
NHS Procurement in Partnership (PiP) – a four-hub collaboration between NHS Commercial Solutions, East of England NHS Collaborative Procurement Hub, NHS North of England Commercial Procurement Collaborative and NHS London Procurement Partnership, previously known as NHS Collaborative Procurement Partnership (CPP)
HealthTrust Europe (HTE)

Recently, CCS and NHS Procurement in Partnership have worked closely together, focusing on the forward strategy for the health workforce sector, they started releasing a series of framework tenders known as the Workforce Alliance from February 2019. Our clients have successfully been awarded places on:

CCS and NHS Procurement in Partnership will be exploring the whole portfolio of health workforce services, including temporary clinical and non-clinical agency workers, with the intent to partner on the procurement, delivery, and management of these services. A full schedule of the planned phases of procurement will be communicated to our customers and suppliers in due course.

Managed Service Contracts: Master Vendor vs. Neutral Vendor

Managed Services have been in the temporary recruitment sector for 20+ years. Considerably, they are widely adopted in the recruitment sector.

We have experience with managing service contracts for master and neutral vendors. A master vendor essentially has one source of recruitment. In comparison to the master vendor model, a neutral vendor model, as its name suggests, differs in its neutrality. Neutral vendor models operate through issuing different candidates from a variety of sources.

The master vendor model centres around one recruitment agency providing all or most of the required workers, whereas, the neutral vendor model takes on the management of a company’s temporary workers. The structuring of the neutral vendor means that they have no ownership over any recruitment agency, thus, there is a level of freedom. They can refer the most appropriate suppliers to work placements to match the organisation’s needs and requirements.

A master vendor model typically includes supplier management, advertising and payroll as well as additional responsibilities. One of its many benefits, include its consistencies in selection criteria, rates and contingent workers. Unlike the neutral vendor, there is no need to deal with multiple recruitment agencies, but they must retain responsibility to fill all requirements themselves.

Professional Services

We ensure that our services clearly and measurably meet the objectives set out in the tender or framework agreement. Our experienced bid team know what questions to ask and how to draw out the best evidence, shaping your bid into a winning bid. As part of our ethos and approach to all of our clients, we always provide the best possible service to meet your company’s needs. Providing guidance throughout the bidding process, we have 4 phases of our services that will increase your successes and opportunities.