Commander forced to keep Affinity IT Recruitment subsidiary

Commander has previously announced its intention to sell the Affinity division, but after extensive discussions with external parties, the service provider wasn’t able to conclude a suitable deal for the Affinity, said Commander’s managing director Amanda Lacaze.

“When we identified the ‘Turnaround Plan’ for Commander we identified Affinity as a subsidiary that was not core to our strategy,” she said. “We are disappointed that we were unable to conclude an external sale of the Affinity IT Recruitment business and therefore have taken the decision to close down operations,” she said.

According to Lacaze, a full review of Affinity’s operations has been completed and management now believes it can be cost effectively managed within Commander’s internal HR division, rather than a separately run division.

“Commander will no longer seek to divest the Affinity business as an ongoing operation. Instead, certain recruitment professionals from Affinity will be appointed to new roles within Commander,” she said.

Affinity IT Recruitment will no longer provide services to external clients. However all current candidate selections will be finalised and Affinity will manage its existing contractor base until the expiry of the contracts, said Lacaze.

However 15 employees, mainly from the sales and administration division, will be retrenched, due to these changes and consequent reduction in overheads, said Lacaze.

“Certain key staff currently employed within Affinity IT Recruitment will transfer into Commander HR group and we expect to greatly reduce recruitment costs for our business. It is unfortunate that these changes will result in some retrenchments,” she said.