Essex Council has established a partnership with workforce technology and services platform Matrix and hiring technology company Alvius, becoming the first council to pioneer a first-of-its-kind hiring model to create a talent community alongside its agency supply.

The news comes following a talent pool partnership between Matrix and Alvius inked last year, combining the Alvius Talent Pooling System (TPS) and the scale and processing power of Matrix to enable employers to benefit from the value gains of building their own pool of talent alongside sourcing from agencies.

Chris Duck, Supply Chain Director at Matrix said: 'There are many benefits of this concept, not least from a financial perspective, but from a social value offering, enabling customers to build and support their own talent pool within the local community. Not only does it give more control to the end customers but allows them to engage their workforce in a positive way, alongside their agency service. This partnership with Alvius allows us to roll out such a unique model.'

Since deploying Alvius’ proprietary hiring technology through Matrix’s neutral vendor service, the solution has been rolled out to numerous public sector companies including Liverpool, Hackney and Plymouth – but this marks the first tender of its kind from Essex Council to buy a talent pool service.

'After years of discussion and collaboration, we came together with Matrix last year in a first partnership of its type in the market, combining the leading neutral vendor and leading talent pooling software,' said Tom Davenport, managing director of Alvius. 'And now, with one of the leading future-facing councils in the country, we’re delighted to be pioneering this new model which, I believe, will be the way forward for talent recruitment.'

Duck adds: 'We view this partnership as a major milestone in the development of the council’s WorkingforEssex model. The service will enable them to create important connectivity to their candidate network and allows them to support their local authorities with tailored and responsive recruitment services.'