Member Article

Sterling announces landmark partnership with Costa Coffee to streamline employee screening

A global leader in background screening services, Sterling, is delighted to announce a landmark partnership with Costa Coffee to provide its ‘ID as a service’ product to support the company’s Right to Work process.

The ‘ID as a service’ product makes use of innovative facial recognition technology to streamline employee screening.

By allowing candidates to provide a ‘selfie’ along with a photo of their official documents, the two are instantly cross-referenced. Following a robust consultation and implementation process with Sterling, Costa Coffee has realised improved efficiency of their background screening programme, and feedback from users and candidates has been positive.

**Tim Stokes, Head of Sales at Sterling EMEA, commented on the partnership: **

“We are all aware of the importance of efficient right to work checks and the value of technology in speeding up the process. Therefore, we are delighted that a company as large and prestigious as Costa Coffee is embracing technology that not only streamlines the process but also vastly improves the candidate experience.”

“This efficiency will be even more important following the economic impact of the coronavirus. When the economy bounces back, and hiring volumes increase, having this product in place will set businesses apart. Therefore, we are delighted with Costa’s quick and efficient implementation of the product, and the early results that it is providing for them.”

**Andrew Ratcliffe, Head of People Shared Services at Costa Coffee, commented: ** “It is crucial that we work with valuable partners that can assist us in building our HR technology. Our main criteria for a provider were speed, mobile capacity, ease of use and simplicity. Sterling provided all of these, and I’m delighted with the product, which is not only enabling us to hire up to 350 people a week during peak times, but also seamlessly interfaces with our ATS systems.”

“We always look at technology with the end-user in mind – and it was clear from our first meeting with Sterling that candidate experience was a top priority for them. This made partnering with the company a no-brainer.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sterling .