Anna Acland, head of international talent at the children's charity, said: "At a time when everyone is making redundancies, we too are having to make tough staffing decisions - which means focusing on recruiting high-performance candidates is even higher on the agenda.
"We've certainly had to look at realigning out recruitment strategy; prioritising what we can do as an organisation. We're being more creative about the way we are solving resourcing requirements - children can't wait so we need to keep up the momentum and to do that we need to look at alternative ways of getting the job done."
Ackland's comments were in response to a call from human capital management software provider StepStone to HR directors to "look to hire as well as fire" in the recession.
Research from StepStone shows 59% of HR professionals think the slowdown is an opportunity to streamline their workforce through redundancy but 42% think the recession will be a good opportunity for them to target talented employees who have been made redundant in their sector.
The survey shows 70% of business leaders think talent management is becoming more important to their company, but only 35% think it is part of HR's role.
Colin Tenwick, CEO of StepStone, said: "HR leaders need to show leadership at a time when there is confusion around talent management and they should be joined at the hip with CEOs. Under the guidance of HR, a company can extract huge value from its talent strategy, drive cost savings and optimise its workforce."
Commenting on the findings, Acland added: "It is important to keep current and ex-employees updated with any organisational changes and to do this well. StepStone's research has shown employees' increasing expectations of switching careers or jobs is the factor that is most likely to fuel talent shortages in their organisations in the next three years and at Save the Children employee engagement continues to be a key aspect of our talent management strategy."
EXCLUSIVE: Save the Children realigns recruitment strategy to attract high-performance talent
As unemployment soars above two million, Save the Children is planning to realign its recruitment strategy in order to attract high-performance candidates.
