In recent months, companies have been hit with big financial penalties, loss of business and a hard knock to their brand reputation for failing to comply with legislation surrounding temporary workers. In worst-case scenarios, a failure in compliance could result in liquidation.
Despite this, you would be surprised by how many companies have little idea what’s going on with their contingent workforce. If you represent even a medium-sized business which relies significantly on temporary workers, can you say that you have visibility of every contingent worker in your organisation? Do you know exactly what contracts they’re signed up to and if they're all fully compliant with the latest legislation?
If the answer to any of these questions is ‘no’, it might be worth considering the benefits of appointing a recruitment partner to give you end-to-end management of your contingent workforce.
There are a few major benefits with universal appeal. Not only will your recruitment partner help you to mitigate risk, but more often than not, implementing this model can deliver significant cost savings to your business through more effective management of your temporary workforce and agency supply chain, and the introduction of slicker, more effective processes. A recruitment partner will make it far easier to achieve and retain compliance, for three main reasons:
1. Visibility and Control
If you’re using contingent workers it’s important to know not just how many workers you have on-site, where they are and what roles they are fulfilling, but also who is supplying those workers, what their contractual status is, how long they have been on assignment, what their pay and charge rates are, if the statutory rates are being applied correctly, and ultimately if you’re using the right type of worker for the job - the list goes on.
Most recruitment partners manage this through VMS (vendor management software) technology which gives you complete visibility and control over your agency worker population – otherwise, it can be very difficult be fully compliant.
2. Supplier Management and Audit
One of the key roles of an MSP is to manage and audit the entire agency supply chain and take responsibility for auditing all the end client’s temporary workers, including those appointed directly by the organisation’s hiring staff.
It’s important that somebody is responsible for ensuring all appropriate checks have been made, all contracts are fully compliant and that those contracts protect the end client against risk.
Many companies sign terms with suppliers without understanding the implications of the terms they have agreed to.
3. Market knowledge
We keep our finger on the pulse of legislative changes and the latest market updates – we are members of APSCo (Association of Professional Staffing Companies) and our compliance team keep up to date on all legislation surrounding the recruitment industry in the UK – so we can keep our partners fully informed. We issue regular bulletins, brief hiring managers and key stakeholders and make sure required changes are implemented swiftly and efficiently.
We've been holding informative workshops for our partners for over a decade, covering topics such as agency worker regulations and IR35, changes to the rules governing umbrella companies and generic compliance.
The labour market is a very complex legal environment, which is ever changing – so keeping on top of compliance is a challenge for any company.
Appointing a recruitment partner gives you greater peace of mind, as well as reducing administrative burden. We take joint responsibility with our clients to ensure legislation is adhered to, processes are changed as required and most importantly, risk is mitigated. For more information and guides on outsourcing your contingent recruitment, download our toolkit here.
