Global Sports’ specialist platform helped Liverpool City Council change their hiring process to attract the people required for a UK city to host a major international sporting event.
The Opportunity
From the 29th of October to the 6th of November 2022, Liverpool welcomed competitors from 70 different countries to the World Gymnastics Championships.
Over 35,000 tickets were sold, and more than 18,000 visitors entered the free fan zone across the nine days of competition. Morinari Watanabe, Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG) president, declared hosting the championships in Liverpool a roaring success and said it marked a new dawn for gymnastics.
The event was delivered by Liverpool City Council in association with British Gymnastics and ACC Liverpool and supported by UK Sport. Public sector organisations hiring for major events can encounter challenges in comparison to private organisations. Local authorities are often bound by strict HR and procurement rules, creating difficulties in hiring freelance, specialist and short-term staff.
Liverpool City Council formed an internal agreement that permitted the hiring of staff using a specialist external system. As a result, Liverpool City Council were able to capitalise on a UK major sports events landscape presenting opportunities to attract experienced event specialists.
The 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games, the rescheduled Rugby League World Cup 2021, and the rescheduled EURO 2020 meant that there would be a higher-than-average strain on resources on the major sports and entertainment talent pool in the UK which supported the need to promote WGC2022 positions to a larger and more experienced pool of talent.
What specific hiring challenges for the World Gymnastics Championships Liverpool 2022 were Liverpool City Council facing before partnering with Global Sports?
It was initially difficult for Liverpool City Council to use a third party to attract staff to work at the World Gymnastics Championships due to existing HR and procurement policies.
By working together Sport Liverpool, HR and procurement teams were able to agree a process that complied fully with council policy but also allowed us to attract people who had specific sport and major sports event experience.
Job opportunities had previously been offered as procurement opportunities and on Liverpool City Council’s website providing an unsatisfactory volume of applicants. Event and Sports event professionals were unlikely to look at a local authority’s career or procurement pages, therefore Liverpool City Council needed to broaden their reach to sports industry professionals.
The Global Sports Solution
The solution was for Global Sports and Liverpool City Council to develop an HR process that helped them effectively advertise the roles on Global Sports, share employer brand media to a sport-specific audience, then complete candidate sorting and interviews internally.
This was a significant change from the previous approach. The first stage was advertising and promoting through Global Sports platforms, increasing their reach to sports events-specific candidates. As there were varying roles and job functions, we used a targeted approach to make sure we hit the right candidates. That combined with an enhanced company profile to increase the awareness of the event, created an attractive opportunity for our candidates.
Secondly, the candidates would be sent through to Liverpool City Council for their internal HR process, the procurement team were able to offer service contracts to the successful candidates through their existing procurement process and platform.
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“Using Global Sports to deliver our recruitment advertising was an unmitigated success. By targeting our recruitment where potential applicants were far more likely to view the opportunities, we saved considerable time and money as well as employing excellent candidates who jointly delivered an amazing event. We will definitely use this model again on future events”.
Jen Falding , Strategic Lead for Major Sports Events, Liverpool City Council
The Results
Global Sports advertised 32 World Gymnastics Championships roles from 2019 until 2022. Liverpool City Council hired 31 hired candidates for these positions who applied via Global Sports. 
Liverpool City Council had an objective to attract sports-specific events talent to work in freelance positions. The Global Sports platform was most valuable for attracting sports industry professionals for events, marketing, and workforce positions.
Liverpool City Council were able to deliver within city council policies and structures to assemble a workforce within a limited time period.
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