he government's publication of the Agency Workers Regulations (AWR) final, which will come into force in October 2011, has prompted many large organisations to review their position on employing agency staff. As a result of the legislation, one company who employs 4,500 permanent staff and between 200 and 700 temporary staff reported that they are aiming to "significantly" reduce their reliance on agency staff. Adhering to the new law could cost an additional £2million another reported in the press.
Many others are creating their own internal agency model so that recruitment can be controlled in-house. Eploy has seen a massive increase in the number of existing corporate clients 'turning on' the software's agency features.
Traditionally, the majority of our corporate clients have only chosen to use the applicant tracking side of our software, but over the last 6-12 months, as a result of AWR, there has been a marked trend in them wanting to make more use of the recruitment features that lie beneath the standard ATS system - those used by agencies.
These include a full temporary and contract management system that can fully cater for timesheet entry, rate management and full online timesheet authorisation. They are all features that give recruiters more control over temporary workers, either as an in-house function - to replicate an agency model - or in conjunction with agencies.
In preparation for AWR, Eploy has also further customised its built-in temporary recruitment tools for corporate recruiters. The new features launched in May 2011, will help recruiters adhere to the Agency Workers Directive and handle all the operational and business reporting aspects of managing temps.
They include:
- Quickly assign candidates to temporary positions and monitor their progress.
- Multiple time sheet processing
- Intuitive online timesheet software enables fully mobile access for remote time sheet entry & remote record checking
- Payroll / Accounts integration
- Integration with outsourced payroll companies
- Support for various candidate payment methods e.g. PAYE, Ltd Company etc.
- Remote access for key bodies / external auditors
Eploy will also easily integrate with your website to enable online timesheet entry and authorisation by everyone involved in the hiring process - candidates, hiring managers and agencies. This not only reduces administration time and overall cost, but provides a centralised communications portal for monitoring the placement of temporary and contract workers.
To further aid the management of the AWR, Eploy is now working with clients to develop customised systems, tailored to suit individual working practices and enhancing the system's built in reporting suite. Part of this process has seen the edition of "intelligent" fields and automated flags and warnings to highlight candidates that will soon come under the rules of the new directive and to monitor and report on temporary workers and contractors.
Corporate recruiters face many daily challenges, but underlying all the different recruitment activities and responsibilities is the issue of compliance and AWR is the next challenge.
Technology plays a huge part and based on all these developments a standard (first generation) ATS is no longer good enough. In-house recruiters need flexible and customisable software that can manage all the different technical, administration and communication aspects of in-house recruitment. It also has to be future-proof and perform as a business, HR, compliance and management reporting tool.
The internet has changed everything; it means in-house recruiters, and those considering bringing recruitment in-house in preparation for AWR, no longer need to use disparate systems that offer no level of cohesion to manage all the different aspects of recruitment. Instead, the future lies in choosing one web-based platform that can be tailored for all recruitment styles and help manage the complexities of UK legislation.
Having chosen to develop a 100% web-based system since 1998, Eploy is now streets ahead of other systems and is completely browser / operating system independent, something that not many "web based" ATS's can truly say. Eploy's unique one size 'fits all' solution is now transforming the way recruiters work by giving in-house recruiters the tools that agencies have been using for years.