Wates Appoints New Resourcing Partner to Win the War for Talent

As the construction industry begins to see signs of recovery, attention will turn to how the construction sector meets a growing skills shortage. How construction companies attract, recruit and retain talent will be more critical than ever for meeting their growth plans. Mark Boorman, Head of HR Operations at Wates, explains:       

“In the past our approach to attracting talent has been reactive and heavily reliant on third party recruitment agencies as well as our own personal networks. This has meant that we have sometimes struggled to compete in the ‘war for talent’ in an industry where skills are highly sought after by many of the competition.

To enable our business to recruit quicker, better and smarter, we have partnered with Resource Management - experts in providing recruitment solutions and services that help companies to attract and recruit the best talent at reduced cost through developing their employer brand.

Over the past three months, Resource Management has been working closely with the Wates’ HR Leadership Team and HR Operations to design a service that will bring a number of benefits and cost savings. As part of the new partnership, Resource Management will provide a dedicated recruitment function that will take ownership for acquiring new talent and remove a lot of the burden of recruitment from hiring managers and HR.

The service, officially launched in April this year, will raise the profile of Wates as an Employer of Choice, maximising exposure and use of the Wates employment brand, and will fully embrace new channels such as LinkedIn and Twitter to attract the right people to our organisation.”

Will Chitty, Recruitment Business Partner, Resource Management comments: “My role will allow Wates’ hiring managers to focus on their core business while I manage the process of securing the best talent available in the marketplace. I am particularly excited about using my social media expertise and witnessing the benefits of utilising various social media platforms effectively to establish a strong position for the Wates brand.” 

Gocompare.com Appoints Its First Resourcing Partner

Resource Management (RM) has been awarded the contract to provide a full end-to-end recruitment solution for price comparison website Gocompare.com.

Following a rigorous selection process, the national recruitment outsourcing and talent management provider, which is part of Resource Solutions Group, is now providing a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) solution for permanent and fixed term roles at Gocompare.com.

Gocompare.com is a UK financial services comparison website for a variety of insurance products, such as car, home and pet insurance; breakdown cover; utilities; and financial products. It was the first such site in the UK to focus on policy details, rather than purely listing them according to their price.

Chris Buckingham, Head of Practice & Implementation, at Resource Management, explains: “This is the first time that Gocompare.com has engaged a partner for its recruitment and we’re very pleased to have been awarded the contract. Our on-site presence will help to build an even stronger relationship with Gocompare.com.

Our scalable solution will enable their HR function to focus on strategic initiatives and harness the power of Gocompare.com’s brand to source candidates directly and improve the quality of employees.”

Martin Spencer, HR and OD Director, Gocompare.com, said: “We are really pleased to be working with RM. We hope that our partnership is going to help us achieve our goal of attracting the best talent to come and work at Gocompare.com, which will enable the company to flourish in the coming years.

Having a permanent member of RM staff based here at Gocompare.com, working so closely with us, is already paying dividends. That direct contact with managers is ensuring that we really are getting the right people for the right jobs.”

Your Contingent Workforce and Tax Evasion: Who's responsible?

On the 6^th April 2014 the UK Government introduced new legislation regarding tax and National Insurance in a bid to deter PAYE and NIC avoidance schemes. The new legislation addresses both offshore and onshore intermediaries; however, it will be the effect of the changes made to the former that are set to impact UK based businesses the hardest.

What are HMRC doing?

In order for HMRC to more easily reclaim estimated 3 billion pounds of unpaid taxes, liability for unpaid tax and NIC contributions by contract workers now lies with the last UK based business in the contractual supply chain (known as Intermediary 1) as opposed to being the responsibility of the contractor or their umbrella company (as was the case previously). The reality of this is that businesses across the UK will now be wholly and immediately responsible for the repayment of tens of thousands of pounds in unpaid tax and National Insurance, which may have accumulated over many years.

Furthermore, businesses that find themselves in the position of ‘Intermediary 1’ will also have to account for every offshore worker who is not already accounted for by HMRC by submitting an electronic report every quarter. Failure to provide the correct information in these reports or to submit the report at all will result in a penalty being administered by HMRC.

Unfortunately, if you find that your company is in the position of Intermediary 1, the supply chain between you, your contractor and their umbrella company is often extremely long and complex rendering it very difficult (if not impossible) to carry out due diligence. Furthermore, unless you already have thorough and efficient processes in place, reporting on all of your offshore workers will require a significant amount of work in order to meet the scale of information required by HMRC.

In addition to the changes being made to offshore intermediaries, the new legislation is also cracking down on the issue of false self employment. Clear differentiation now needs to be made between self-employed and employed workers, with liability now being placed on the entire supply chain in order to ensure that there is no intended evasion of employment related payments by falsely self-employed individuals. The reality is that if you, as an employer, do not conduct due diligence to ensure that your workforce are not party to such a scheme, then you will be deemed as complicit in tax evasion and will be prosecuted accordingly.

What should you and your business do?

• Undertake due diligence to ensure that umbrella companies and offshore PSCs can demonstrate compliance with the NIC and tax deduction requirements and that all information provided by them is correct. Regarding your contingent workforce, you’ll need to know the answers to questions such as: What does your supply chain look like? In what areas of the business are they providing service? How much are they being paid?

• Remove yourself from being in the position of ‘Intermediary 1’  by utilising the services of a trusted recruitment partner, which will prevent you from becoming the last UK business in the contractual supply chain and will ultimately protect you from being held accountable for anything that may have occurred further up the supply chain.

• Reduce the burden of thorough reporting by working with a recruitment partner. Resource Management are already adept at gathering and providing the scale of reporting required by the HMRC. For this reason, we will be able to provide reports on your temporary staff far more efficiently and accurately than you will be able to if you do not already have such processes in place.