New recruits

A dynamic year ahead, new branding and happy franchisees – 2022 is lining up well for Frontline Recruitment Group.

W “e've had a major success in franchise sentiment, the Net Promotor Score increasing by 36 points in July,” reports an enthusiastic Arthur McColl, CEO of Frontline Recruitment Group (FRG).

“We’ve been perfecting the business models, gained the trust of franchisees and increased profitability.”

In early 2020 the group was purchased by US firm Express Employment Professionals.

In addition to a substantial support system and resources, FRG now has a sibling business focused on flexible staffing, with the US model tweaked and introduced to the Australian market in 2021.

It’s been a whirlwind couple of years with new owners and the challenges of Covid thrown in.

So looking ahead to a new year and a newlyminted brand is exciting for the FRG team.

“We relaunched FRG in January as a new, vibrant brand and a working group of six franchisees has been heavily involved,” reveals Arthur.

Creating working groups in marketing and IT/ data has been one solution to franchisee requests for more collaboration.

“This is a 26-year-old brand, so we listened to the network, undertook an engagement survey and they said the brand was dated. So we went to the US [head office] for a budget.”

FRG’s chief marketing officer, Michelle Gamble, believes the timing is perfect, one year into acquisition and post-lockdowns.

“Attracting consultants drives our growth, so we need the brand to be modernised,” she says. “Lots of our business is female focused and our brand is quite masculine. It needs to reflect what we are today, the diversity of the client bases, a more sophisticated business, it needs a human element.”

FRG operates within a number of industries, where franchisees draw on their personal industry experiences to operate their own small business in their chosen sector: retail, hospitality, construction, health, education, and IT and digital industries.

Today FRG has 80,000 clients and 1.2 million candidates on its database, which franchisees can tap into. The business model provides business systems, training, budgeting and financial analysis so franchisees are set up for success from the start.

Arthur says three new agencies came on board with the Express brand last year – one corporate, one a conversion from an FRG agency, one in New Zealand – and with strong performances overall in the final few months of 2021 the company is set to expand on its success.