For organisations to utilise them effectively though, there needs to be a great deal of review and scrutiny that goes into their decision-making process.

Accessing specialist skills

Where a Statement of Work solution works well is when elements of a project require specialist skills – often not found in the local temporary workforce community. Organisations first need to review which project delivery components could potentially be delivered by a service provider as opposed to contingent workers, and scope out the requirements for the package of work.

Statement of Works should run independently from how directly employed and contingent workers are engaged, because your organisation will be entering into a contract with another company to deliver services for you, not a person. It’s therefore crucial that the requirements covered in the SoW can be delivered with no direct control from you, with the service provider left with the responsibility of managing the day-to-day operations in line with pre-agreed milestone and project deliverables.

Where organisations are looking for greater control over how the work is completed, a SoW solution may not be as well suited as an employment approach.

Navigating the tender process

Appointing service providers to complete your Statement of Works is approached in a very different way to engaging permanent or non-permanent workers. A full Request For Proposal (RFP) tender process is needed to invite service providers to bid for the package of work, review their capability and experience, then select the right provider to complete the project requirements.

It’s a comprehensive process, that needs to be built with transparency and integrity – including developing a ranking matrix to review and analyse each service provider, benchmarking them against key indicators such as past experience and project delivery capability. Which our clients often feel an external consultancy approach working with our dedicated team provides the 360 degree overview required to get the process right.

“Organisations will often require a mix of Statement of Works alongside traditional recruitment engagement models such as contingent workers to effectively deliver their projects. The key is to accurately assess which key elements of the projects can effectively and genuinely be delivered through an experienced service provider autonomously following a SoW.”

– Andy Iddon, Linx Project Delivery Manager

Managing the risk

With the service provider being engaged to complete the work, the SoW contractual agreement can be developed to clearly set out who maintains responsibility for project delivery and, crucially, any incurred costs where project delays impact other suppliers or delivery timescales. It’s therefore important that Statement of Work contracts are extensively critiqued to ensure organisations can effectively manage the risk to their own business.

Ensuring project governance

Once the service provider is engaged onto the project, ongoing governance will be required to ensure they are performing against the pre-agreed milestones and project deliverables. With payments released in line with the contractual terms, and where all key performance indicators and service level requirements have been met.

At Linx we work with our clients to devise effective review measures to managed service providers and report back on performance. Leaving our clients to focus on the overall project delivery, secure in the knowledge that all packages of work are being progressed effectively.

We help organisations look at how alternative engagement models such as Statement of Works can be developed to complement their wider contingent workforce recruitment processes to gain access to the right specialist skills for optimum project delivery.

The post Is a Statement of Work right for your project? appeared first on Linx.

Using an external compliance partner to develop clear supply chain audit processes, can ensure that organisations remain compliant and up to date with how their suppliers are performing, as well as drive engagement at every level.

Managing compliance

The temporary employment of workers is a complex task, especially given the large amount of legislation and regulatory compliance required to meet HMRC’s requirements.

Whilst many of these rules are the recruitment agency’s responsibility to fulfil, organisations will still want to consider their brand perception and any potential damage to their reputation that could occur where a supplier is not compliant. Whilst the organisation in their role as the client may not be directly accountable for non-compliance, the impact of any high-profile issues can have a lengthy and damaging affect none the less.

Reviewing performance

It’s crucial that an organisation has good overall management and insight of how their supply chain is performing and whether all regulatory compliance is being met. Understanding what to measure and how to benchmark effectiveness though can be difficult when there is nothing to compare against.

It is therefore important to collaborate with an experienced partner, who can draw down from their industry knowledge – to ensure robust auditing measures, service levels and key performance indicators are in place to gauge the effectiveness and compliance across the supply chain.

Engaging the supply chain

A well devised compliance-led supply chain audit can provide a fantastic opportunity to open two-way dialogue with suppliers – ensuring they’re given the appropriate mechanism to air any concerns they may have and suggest potential improvements.

At Linx, we work with clients to ensure that all parties best benefit from the audit, so it is not seen as a one-way formal process which leaves no room for recruitment agencies to get fully involved. Taking an independent approach to auditing, such as engaging a partner like Linx, can encourage suppliers to be more open and forthcoming with feedback, and allow them to feel part of the overall compliance strategy.

“Implementing supply chain audits can be daunting for both the client and supply chain, so it’s essential that the entire process is open, transparent and well communicated. This approach ensures that suppliers don’t feel daunted by the prospect of being audited. Helping them to understand that the process has not been devised to challenge them, but to simply ensure standard checks are in place to check compliance and give them a forum to get involved.”

– Will Fossey, Linx Director

Devising the right auditing approach

How you approach auditing your supply chain will depend on what your aims are. What are you trying to establish? How frequently do you want to check compliance? How in-depth should the auditing be? How regularly can you genuinely expect your supply chain to dedicate time and resource to complete auditing processes?

Finding the right balance, will help to ensure the supply chain continues to be engaged with the process.

Creating insightful reporting

Once the right information has been captured from the supply chain, the various data points come together into a meaningful management information suite. Allowing organisations to instantly gauge overall performance and compliance, as well as digging deeper to assess individual suppliers and conformance with specific legislation. This information allows organisations to put a strategy in place to identify and implement any required changes, as well as taking onboard supplier feedback and improvement suggestions.

Linx’s Compliance as a Service is tailored to suit each client, looking at what’s important for their organisation, what regulatory compliance needs to be met, and how they can best engage their supply chain. The team then work with stakeholders to develop and introduce supply chain auditing, ensuring there is a careful balance between capturing the data and maintaining an engaged supply chain.

The post The importance of auditing your recruitment supply chain appeared first on Linx.

For clients looking to secure specialist skills, not readily available within the contingent workforce marketplace, a Statement of Work (SoW) can be a great way to move away from traditional recruitment models towards service provider delivery.

We take a look at Statement of Works in more detail.

Defining a Statement of Work

SoW solutions are completely different to traditional options such as contingent and permanent employment. It is very much about engaging a service provider to deliver an outcome-based solution and not an individual person.

Taking a performance based approach

SoW agreements are outcome-based projects, and therefore all milestone payments are to an agreed milestone delivery payment structure. These performance based measures allow the client to engage a single or multiple service providers under a defined package of work.

Whatever the package may be, the work that is required from the service provider is broken down into clearly defined task deliverables and pre-agreed milestones. Service providers are then reimbursed based upon successful completion of these delivery outputs, in line with the payment terms. With the client having minimal involvement in any level of detail other than scoping out, service provider selection, and agreeing the requirements and acceptance criteria for the package of work.

A Statement of Work in practice

Statement of Work solutions work particularly well where specialist skills are required, or where an element of a project can be delivered as a package of work. As it will be a B2B relationship, there will not be any daily direction or control over the individual requirements for the tasks, so clients will need to be comfortable to leave the service provider to deliver their work autonomously – engaging whatever team they feel is required, whist ensuring that all the client’s compliance processes are followed.

Appointing a service provider

Clients will need to scope out each potential Statement of Work, defining what the milestones and project deliverables will be to complete the work. Including any timescales and quality expectations.  Linx takes a collaborative approach, working with clients to fully understand and scope the project requirements. Creating defined tasks with clear acceptance criteria, which the service provider will need to meet in order to receive the related milestone payment.

Organisations will then need to undertake a tender request process, inviting qualified service providers to bid for the work and submit their proposals. Following an internal review of the tender submissions, a service provider can be appointed to commence the work.

The challenge for organisations is to ensure the package of work is fully scoped and the right service provider is appointed at the tender stage – something which HR and Talent Acquisition teams are often not familiar with.

Developing compliant Statement of Works

By working with a Workforce Solutions Provider, such as Linx, an organisation can ensure the right checks and processes are in place to effectively manage Statement of Work solutions. Our team will work with stakeholders throughout the SoW development process, taking the time to check that all project requirements have been documented in the Statement of Work with no ambiguity or misconceptions. Before supporting our clients to devise a thorough and transparent tender process that allows them to independently review potential service providers and verify their credentials and experience. Once the project commence, we’ll then work with the project delivery team to effectively monitor and review the performance of service providers against the pre-agreed milestones, project deliverables, service levels and  quality expectations.

Linx support global organisations to deliver projects by devising Statement of Work solutions that allow them to access specialist service providers whilst maintaining complete transparency and effective performance management. At times of high demand for resources, a Linx Statement of Work solution provides access to specialist service providers to undertake short to medium term work packages to responsively deliver project objectives.

For transparency, AI has been used during the generation of this article, with every care taken to verify its accuracy.

The post What is a Statement of Work? appeared first on Linx.

Now that IR35 is in force across both the public and private sectors, it’s crucial that organisations have a long-term plan that will ensure their operations remain compliant.

We take a look at how business leaders should approach this.

Developing an effective supply chain strategy

For organisations managing their contingent labour requirements through multiple recruitment agencies, it’s important to have full visibility of how IR35 is being implemented across the supply chain.  

With the end client holding the responsibility to make accurate status determination statements, but the fee payer tasked with making the relevant deductions – formal processes and measures are needed to mitigate risk. 

That’s where Linx comes in. Our expert team will work with you to evaluate your supply chain and implement the changes needed to ensure all stakeholders understand their responsibilities. 

Independent auditing to ensure compliance

Our IR35 auditing services are shaped around how your business operates, and how you engage your supply chain. Each time a new contingent worker starts work, or an existing assignment materially changes, a new status determination statement is needed. It’s also good practice to periodically review your status determination statements to ensure they’re still representative of how the worker is engaged. This continuous need to re-evaluate and reproduce statements, means organisations need to have a robust process in place to ensure this is being compliantly managed. 

To do this, we’ll work with you to devise an IR35 auditing process – before working with your supply chain to undertake the necessary checks. With comprehensive reporting and evaluation, you’ll be left with a clear view across your supply chain, with sound advice on any potential risks or areas of concern. 

Typical solutions we’ve developed for our clients include: 

• Internal process analysis and evaluation
• Supply chain engagement and communication
• Supplier audit cycle calendar
• Agency worker payroll checks 

For transparency, AI has been used during the generation of this article, with every care taken to verify its accuracy.

The post Getting IR35 right for your business appeared first on Linx.

Although the April implementation for IR35 in the private sector may have passed, the topic isn’t going away anytime soon.

HMRC will be looking to ensure organisations are compliant with the legislation, which will extend across their supply chain. Where organisations engage multiple recruitment agencies to supply contingent labour, a process will be needed to evaluate compliance.

Tracking and monitoring determinations

Each time a worker assignment changes or is adapted – a new status determination statement (SDS) is needed. It’s also best practice to periodically review these statements, to check whether they still reflect the assignment the worker is undertaking. In particular where contingent workers are engaged on a lengthy project, it’s a good idea to set an end date on their SDS for 6-12 months – to ensure it’s regularly reviewed.

If an organisation is engaging multiple agencies, without a central point of control such as a managed service provider (MSP), these checks will need to be built into their supply chain management processes. Where an MSP is engaged however, this can provide a great mechanism to develop a formal supply chain auditing process.

“Regular auditing is going to be the key to ensuring an organisation’s contingent workforce remains IR35 compliant. It’s often difficult for organisations to see how IR35 is managed across every level of their supply chain though. We see our role as being their eyes and ears – identifying any concerns and implementing a formal process to ensure compliance”

– Richard Hanson, Linx Client Services Director

Ensuring determinations remain accurate

As the hype around IR35 quietens down, it’s more important than ever to ensure that Hiring Managers tasked with making each SDS stay up to date with the legislation. It’s a good idea to plan in regular refresher training and ensure that any new Hiring Managers understand IR35 processes. Even experienced professionals coming from roles with previous experience managing IR35 need to understand your organisations’ approach and protocols.

Where HMRC investigates IR35 determinations, they’ll be looking to ensure that reasonable care has been taken when organisation’s created each SDS. Well documented staff training forms just one part of the evidence to indicate that IR35 has been scrupulously managed within the organisation.

For transparency, AI has been used during the generation of this article, with every care taken to verify its accuracy.

The post What IR35 best practice looks like appeared first on Linx.

As organisations across the UK breathe a sigh of relief as the 6^th April Private Sector implementation date finally passes, it’s crucial to remember that the hard work to ensure IR35 compliance does not stop at this gatepost.

Adopting the right long-term strategy

Each time a Hiring Manager makes a material change to how they engage a contractor, a thorough review will need to be undertaken to re-evaluate their IR35 status for off-payroll working. As all projects continue to evolve and change, you can also expect that your Hiring Managers will need to bring in additional resources – requiring new status determinations to identify from the offset whether these extra resources will be in or outside IR35.

It’s for this reason that organisations need to ensure that IR35 continues to be a living, breathing element to how they operate their business – ensuring that they continue to be able to demonstrate reasonable care is being taken across their operations.

“The client must take reasonable care when determining whether the worker would have been an employee if they were engaged directly. Reasonable care means clients should act in a way that would be expected of a prudent and reasonable person in the client’s position.”

– HMRC, Employment Status Manual (ESM10014)

Ensuring Hiring Manager compliance and consistency

The subject of reasonable care, whilst open to interpretation, means that consideration will need to continue to be taken as individual contracts end and new commercial projects commence.

It’s a good idea to ensure you’re incorporating IR35 into your annual training calendar, so that new Hiring Managers joining your organisation have formal training to understand your approach and standard processes. Refresher training will also be required throughout the year, to ensure a consistent approach is taken to create accurate status determination statements.

Ensuring compliance across the supply chain 

For organisations operating without a central point of control for their agency supply chain, individual audits will need to be undertaken with each supplier. Review processes will need to be developed to ensure that their off-payroll workers are being passed down determinations and are operating within the contractual terms that played a part in determining their assignments out of scope.

Where organisations have partnered with a workforce solutions provider to manage their recruitment supply chain on their behalf, IR35 supply chain compliance should form an important topic in their working relationship.

Extensive analysis will also be required to review rehire rates and evaluate those regularly re-engaged contractors to ensure their working practices continue to remain compliant with the rules and expectations around off-payroll working.

For transparency, AI has been used during the generation of this article, with every care taken to verify its accuracy.

The post Long-term planning will be the key to ensuring IR35 compliance appeared first on Linx.

As the 6^th April 2021 deadline fast approaches, all eyes will be on the clock to ensure preparations are underway to make accurate IR35 status determination statements (SDS) across your organisation’s Private Sector contractor workforce.

We look at the final piece in the puzzle, engaging the HR team to ensure effective, consistent, and compliant communication.

Engaging the right people

Recent guidance from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) rightly points out that managing IR35 will involve a large team from across your organisation.

Even where a special project team has been established to understand the legislation and devise your organisation’s strategy to ensuring compliance, HR teams and Hiring Managers will also need to be engaged to manage the communication – both within the business and externally to the impacted contractors.

“HR will need to set up a process outlining when and how contractors will get their status determination statements (SDS) from the employer, as well as creating a process for appeal for those individuals who might question their SDS.”

– Charles Cotton, CIPD Research and Policy Adviser

CIPD recommends organisations work with their HR team to develop a communications plan to ensure Hiring Managers understand what information they need to issue to their off-payroll contractors, and crucially when they need to provide the information – making sure a consistent message is delivered across the off-payroll workforce.

Crucially, this information will also need to be passed down the employment chain – in accordance with HMRC’s requirements when issuing each SDS. For organisations with a complex resourcing model managing multiple recruitment agencies, the support of a central outsourced solutions provider such as Linx can help to identify the organisation’s legal requirements for passing down the SDS – and help avoid the financial liability incurred for failing to do so.

HR departments will also need to ensure they can evidence, if challenged by HMRC, that anyone making Status Determination Statements (SDS) has taken reasonable care – including recording training and communication logs.

Preparing for SDS disputes

Planning ahead for when each SDS comes into force, HR departments and organisations will also need to ensure they have developed a robust dispute process, to handle any status disagreements that off-payroll workers may lodge.

Should they receive any from contractors falling in scope who wish to challenge the determination, the organisation must respond to the contractor within 45 days – detailing the outcome of their investigation. This means organisations will need to ensure they have a consistent internal process and transparency chain for responsibility.

Reference: CIPD Voice, Issue 27

For transparency, AI has been used during the generation of this article, with every care taken to verify its accuracy.

The post Making final preparations for IR35 appeared first on Linx.

For large global engineering companies, the flexibility a contingent workforce can provide allows them to quickly scale up their operations to meet work package demands.

Projects provide a great opportunity to engage local labour on a short-term basis and draw on the expertise of leading industry experts for key stages of each project.

With the extension of IR35 into the Private Sector from April 2021 however, many organisations are left with the challenge of continuing to engage off-payroll workers whilst remaining compliant.

Clearly defining processes

Off-payroll workers, whether they are managed through your recruitment agency’s contractor payroll, an Umbrella arrangement or their own Personal Service Company (PSC), need to be engaged in a different way to your directly employed workforce. Formal processes will be needed to meet legal requirements such as Agency Worker Regulations.

When organisations consider IR35 and their engagement of PSC contractors, this clear division of processes becomes even more important.

“HMRC will be looking to see that reasonable care has been taken when making IR35 status determinations. To demonstrate a clear understanding of the legislation, it’s crucial that organisations have specific processes for managing their off-payroll workers.”

– Richard Hanson, Linx Client Services Director

Developing IR35 compliant processes

How a contractor is engaged and how much direction and control is imposed, reflects the relationship that off-payroll worker has with the organisation. To fall Out of Scope of IR35, HMRC will expect to see that off-payroll contractor management is fundamentally different to directly engaged colleagues.

This focus looks at even the most basic of organisational processes such as booking time off for holidays. Directly engaged colleagues will have a formal process to request authorisation from their Line Manager. As a contingent worker is managed off your payroll however and is seen as independent from your organisation, they should not be expected to follow the same process. As an external contractor they should be either providing a service, or not providing a service – requiring no formal authorisation from your organisation to take leave. Practicalities around project deadlines and deliverables however can be factored into the contract particulars to ensure that work is delivered on schedule.

Annual leave is just one example of where off-payroll processes should differ from your own workforce. Whilst HMRC have said no one factor such as this will invoke an In Scope IR35 determination, they will be looking for evidence and formal processes to demonstrate that your organisation manages PSC contractors differently – understanding the key measures for IR35.

The post IR35 – Why organisations need to take a different approach with their off-payroll workers appeared first on Linx.

For some businesses though the radical change to the industry landscape at the peak of the global pandemic, identified opportunities to diversify and strategically target emerging markets to reposition their organisation – moving away perhaps from sectors that had traditionally provided a core revenue stream for their business.

As organisations begin to regroup and review their future plans, it provides a great opportunity to consider how well positioned their supply chain is to support their changing needs.

“When reviewing your recruitment supply chain, it’s crucial that you’re choosing suppliers that are flexible in the short-term, but also responsive to the bigger picture.”

– Richard Hanson, Linx Client Services Director

As organisations begin to consider where they see their business in the next five years, they may identify that their recruitment requirements will also change.

The role of a centrally outsourced workforce management partner should be to work strategically to map out the future talent acquisition requirements and ensure suppliers are able to meet these challenges face on.

Factors such as potential skill shortages and legislation changes will also need to be considered – ensuring solutions are available to build talent pools and react to any changes in the market.

Crucially though, organisations need to know that their recruitment supply chain is responsive enough to continue to deliver a consistent supply of suitably qualified and skilled candidates to a level required to meet their future plans.

The post Is your recruitment supply chain working for you long-term? appeared first on Linx.

As we began to climb to the peak of the virus the Government encouraged businesses to send their colleagues to work from home wherever possible – resulting in pictures across the media of deserted cities and near-empty trains.

It’s certainly factually correct to say that without technology, businesses would not have been able to remain so agile during this global pandemic. With the Office for National Statistics identifying that 86% of those who worked from home in April reporting COVID-19 as the reason, technology’s role in keeping businesses moving became all too clear.

As Teams calls and catch ups over Zoom became the new way of life, businesses also began to put their technology systems and processes to the ultimate test. For businesses managing their recruitment resourcing through an applicant tracking system (ATS) or vendor management system (VMS) this temporary relocation from a shared office space was achieved somewhat autonomously. Provided clear processes had been built into the workforce management system, the geographical location of colleagues bared little impact on ensuring the process could continue without complications.

The wide-scale adoption of video calling also supported the hiring process remotely – with businesses choosing to hold interviews virtually. By utilising technology, they could reduce any potential delay in selecting suitable applicants – ensuring that time-to-hire did not increase, which could incur additional resource costs. For businesses managing a large volume of temporary contractors, technology helped ensure that the sudden increase in demand for critical projects could still be met with the correct level of resourcing.

The massive disruption COVID-19 has had on businesses, certainly highlights the need to ensure that systems and processes can remain uninterrupted even when a global pandemic is at its peak. For businesses who had to play catch up to attempt to quickly implement the technology they needed to ensure their business remained able to deliver services to their clients, COVID-19 delivered a clear message – business processes must be led by the right technology, running streamlined processes.

Reference: Office for National Statistics April 2020

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