The Employers Mutual Protection Service (EMPS) is the trusted market leader for all aspects of screening and vetting across both the private and public sector. EMPS carry out reference checks on previous employment, educational establishments and organise character references.
To effectively carry out these checks, EMPS would usually need to call the nominated character references to supply the referral. Until this check is completed, employment cannot be offered.
In every line of work, time is always limited and the team at EMPS were finding it increasingly difficult to speak to a character reference with work restrictions, people driving etc. The issue became the company’s biggest source of frustration.
EMPS began using SMS to send messages requesting a character reference. Those who received the messages could call the team back or email when most convenient. Invariably, EMPS then started receiving numerous emails outside of working hours, when the nominated referrers had the most time to complete the request.
In addition to using SMS to ask for references, EMPS also saw the opportunities of the channel for communicating with the applicant as well. It was often difficult for applicants to speak to EMPS as they may still have been working for their current employer. Since sending SMS to candidates, EMPS saw their biggest increase in return calls from applicants, past employers and character references.
Since using Textlocal to send the reference requests, EMPS now get more responses than ever before and their successful call rate is above 90%
EMPS have also negated their reliance on post to obtain required information, reducing the annual postal expenditure by about 60%, a significant saving for the company.
We now use SMS as our “go-to” method of communication if Email addresses have not been supplied (which they are usually not) and our speed of completing screening files has also increased significantly because of this facility and in today’s modern era just about everyone has a mobile phone.
—Employers Mutual Protection Service Ltd
