Employment agencies
New regulations aim to improve employment agency standards, which should make recruitment easier for publicans.
We can expect to hear more in the coming weeks about the falling unemployment statistics. Spin or sincere? Who knows?
If it truly is the case, all very well for the economy at large but is it a double-edged sword for your industry?
"Can't get the staff, you know" doesn't really have the same faintly humorous edge to it when you see standards falling due to staff shortages.
So how do you recruit staff? Personal recommendation by word of mouth has to be the best option. "Poaching staff", it's sometimes called. Personally, I prefer them lightly grilled.
Advertisements in the local or trade press often depend on how well your ad measures up against your competitors'.
But if no-one any good turns up from these sources, what options have you got left? Government job-shops may turn out to be relatively cost-effective, but is their aim to get work for often long-term unemployed reconcilable with an employer's obvious desire to recruit the best candidate for the post?
It could well be time to reach for your wallet and head off to the recruitment consultants - the employment agencies.
You may well have had experience of such agencies yourself, whether as prospective employer or employee. They've been around for over 100 years and laws regulating their operation are almost as old.
The employment agency industry has changed and expanded enormously since the mid-1970s. Now it provides workers in every field of employment and research indicates that the industry had more than tripled in size between 1992 and 1998.
It is estimated that each week about half a million work seekers find employment through the use of such agencies.
A sizeable proportion of those work seekers will be from your industry.
Problems do of course arise. Some of these problems come to the attention of the government-appointed watchdog, the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate, based at the DTI.
Its helpline - 0645 555105 - receives more than 10,000 enquiries each year, over 10 per cent of which lead to formal investigations into actual or alleged breaches of standards. These are some of the causes of those problems:
- poor drafting of the regulations
- confusion as to which standards apply to a particular agency
- doubts as to steps required by an agency to establish the suitability of a work-seeker for a particular job
- failure by agencies to check a work-seeker's credentials and experience
- work-seekers given hazardous work completely outside their capability
- payment to workers for work done made conditional upon other work being done
- work-seekers only being provided with work if they agree to buy services from third parties associated with the employment agency.
It was with these problems in mind that the Government issued a consultation document two years ago. This has now led to the publication of draft regulations designed to ensure that high standards set by reputable agencies are not undermined by cowboy operators.
It is presently anticipated that the draft regulations will go before Parliament in three months time. The draft regulations contain a mix of:
- removal of unnecessary regulations
- promotion of labour market flexibility
- better protection of the interests of both work-seekers and hirers.
So, all in all, the DTI seems intent on riding the cowboys out of town, or to put it in the official government lingo, it "has been guided by its desire to promote a competitive industry and its desire to create a skilled and flexible labour market, built upon social partnership, in which work-seekers and employers are treated with the fairness and benefit from the minimum standards which all have the right to expect".
As I'm sure you'll agree, very comforting words for an employer when his head barman and chef walk out on 10 minutes' notice!
How will draft regulations affect you:
- at the moment, a hirer has to pay a fee to an employment agency when it wishes to take on an agency temp. It is proposed that an alternative should be available - called a "hiring extension option" - enabling the hirer to hire a worker for a period specified in a contract on terms that are no less favourable than those which applied before the option was exercised
- clearer contracts are to be introduced
- agencies are not to be permitted to circulate indiscriminately details of work-seekers on their books
- agencies are not to be permitted to charge entertainers before they find them work
- tighter restrictions on advertising by agencies designed to reduce the number of wholly fictitious jobs advertised
- tighter financial controls.
by David Clifton, one of the Publican's legal team.
