Transferring from a perm recruitment agency to the temp recruitment market

What are the key things to consider when moving into the temp recruitment market?

Being a permanent recruitment agency, you may have considered branching out into the temp market before or perhaps you’ve had to turn down offers of temp placements. Whatever the reason maybe, there are many advantages to growing your agency by supplying temp workers and making the change can be a lot easier than you think.

Whether it’s for sickness cover, maternity leave or due to current wider market conditions, work will always need maintaining, and temporary staff are the perfect solution to making sure productivity can continue.

Already being established, despite being perm, can work in your favour. Most likely you already have several connections that offer temp placements, a wealth of knowledge within you/your team, and the financial means to support the venture. However, there are a few areas you need to carefully evaluate when providing temps.

Compliance

Recruitment agencies, specifically those employing temporary workers and contractors, have been in the news, along with other UK employers that have had to pay fines of almost £30m, for failing to comply with current ‘right to work’ checks. It’s important not to skip over temp employees and make sure proper checks are carried out not only in the onboarding process, but all necessary training and certificates are up-to-date and compliant throughout their employment.

It is difficult to know about every piece of legislation which could be pertinent to an industry, and the full extent of all the possible compliance issues for temporary recruitment agencies, but it is estimated as many as 25% of recruiters could be non-compliant with the latest HMRC legislation, without their knowledge. You can always check the latest compliance and regulations needed on the Government or the REC website.

Communication

Like any busy recruitment agency, you probably spend a great deal of your time on the phone to candidates, updating them on jobs and reminding them about and confirming appointments and interviews. This can end up taking hours out of your working day and adding more employees to your growing agency is only going to increase your need for successful communications.

Setting up SMS messaging can speed up communication with your temporary workers by contacting groups of them at once. So if you have a number of temporary workers in place you can contact them all at the same time.

Outsourcing

As an established perm agency, you may already have recruitment software in place to help manage your back office and administration. However before supplying temps, you need to work out whether your back office providers can not only process/manage temps, but if it does, is this functionality as effective as it could be.

We can help you make the move from Perm to Temp recruitment pain-free and quick, with a whole package of options - from software to an outsourced full back office service and funding package for recruitment agencies.

For everything you need to know about the temp market, check out our resources page right here or contact us on 01827 438065 or send us a message.