TUI UK & Ireland has slashed its recruitment costs by 50% and reduced time to hire by 90% by launching an online recruitment system.

The travel company worked with StepStone to implement an e recruitment platform last year and since then has had more than 22,000 applications.

Staff apply for jobs and receive contracts online, streamlining the company's application to offer time and reducing the period between job offer to contract from three weeks to 48 hours.

Sue Chatfield, head of resourcing and HR services at TUI, said: "The qualitative results have been outstanding and we have witnessed significant time and cost savings in the first six months alone. But what these figures do not show is how we have also managed to improve the quality of our hires - we have increased out chances of recruiting the talent we are looking for."

She added: "We have had fewer candidates decline our offers as the system - as part of our overall recruitment strategy- has allowed us to move quickly. Some of our new recruits have said they accepted the position because we were the first to get back to them."