AWR & Compliance – One less thing to worry about
Regardless of whether you have worked in recruitment for a year or 10 years and more, you won’t have failed to notice that the sector is subject to many regulations and frequent changes in legislation. This can be tricky for even the most efficient and established recruitment businesses to keep track of and be sure to give recruiters something to worry about.
Keeping track of legislation is critical to ensuring that your business remains compliant and honours its legal obligations – failure to do so can and often does lead to costly consequences.
Of course, the challenge for agency owners is not only being aware of what legislation they need to be up to date with, but also finding the time to do so. Perhaps the most important of all is Agency Workers Regulations (AWR).
AWR came into force in 2011 and provides agency workers with entitlement to the same basic employment and working conditions as if they had been employed directly when completing a qualifying period of 12 weeks in the same job.
According to the Office for National Statistics Labour Force Survey, there are more than 865,000 agency workers in the UK and this number is predicted to rise to over one million by 2020. With the demand for agency workers showing no sign of slowing down anytime soon, it is important for recruitment business owners who employ contractors and temp workers to ensure they both understand the regulations and have the processes in place to adhere to them too.
This is where technology could help!
As a partner of Simplicity, you can gain FREE access to an innovative CRM and complete end-to-end workflow solution designed specifically for recruiters – GEMS.
As well as combining both front and back office systems into one process, GEMS enables recruiters to manage important aspects of AWR within the system. You have the option to set up ‘parity rates’ within rate cards that automatically pays workers the set pay and accrues holiday when a worker hits the 12-week qualifying period, giving you peace of mind.
GEMS also provides you with an AWR report that features a traffic light warning system, highlighting the AWR status of each candidate and whether they have parity rates set up or not, helping you to become more efficient.
As well as AWR features, the GEMS recruitment software assists you with tracking the compliancy requirements for each candidate. You can add all types of certificates/qualifications such as; driver’s licenses, CSCS cards, passports etc. that you require candidates to hold for job purposes. GEMS will also keep you notified of when they are due to expire, thus allowing you to keep track and ensure you supply certified and compliant workers to clients.
Time is a precious commodity that few recruiters can afford to waste, especially in today’s ultra-competitive recruitment marketplace. So, it follows that if a recruiter can claim back some of that time lost to checking that they are operating in accordance to current legislation and staying compliant, they will be free to focus more of their efforts on growing their agency. That’s where GEMS comes into play - the system has been specifically designed for busy recruiters. Since launching last autumn, GEMS now has over 500 users and they are each seeing the immediate benefits – peace of mind, increased efficiencies, time saved and reduced costs. The only question that remains to be asked is, what are you waiting for?