YOUR REGION: United States

Tag: Workforce Management

A framework that solves talent access challenges with an outcome-first approach

Allegis Global Solutions (AGS), a provider of global workforce solutions, announced the publication of a new book for business, human resources (HR) and procurement leaders that takes them on a journey to harmonised workforce strategy and management.

“The Universal Workforce Model™: An Outcome-First Guide to Getting Work Done” talks about the three transformational yet complementary concepts – the Workforce Business Partner, Task-Based Workforce Design and the Intelligent Workforce Platform. The book lays out why organisations must challenge current models for acquiring and accessing talent now and what steps they can take to create an agile business fit to thrive in the new world of work.

Authored by AGS’ Vice President of EMEA Simon Bradberry and Global Head of Strategy Bruce Morton, with contributors John Boudreau (senior research scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Southern California), Ewan Greig (AGS senior manager of workforce solutions), Jessi Guenther (AGS vice president of client delivery) and Sarah Wong (AGS vice president of APAC), the book refocuses on the work itself before jumping to talk about workers, roles and vacancies, offering readers an alternative way to rethink work through outcome-based workforce acquisition.

Bruce Morton, Global Head of Strategy commented: “Current models for acquiring and accessing talent are outdated and flawed. Companies compete for talent they may never fully use, overspend or underspend on contractors based on limited data, and may forfeit budget and quality as a result. This is why the Universal Workforce Model starts with the outcome first, applying a workforce planning model that breaks down siloed resource channels, so organisations can secure the right resource every time, and work most efficiently and effectively.”

The Universal Workforce Model is structured as a journey to harmonised workforce management and has three defining features based on common areas of business transformation – process, people and technology.

Simon Bradberry AGS’ Vice President of EMEA commented: “Advances in AI and services-enabled architecture have given rise to technologies that bring all workforce options into view, making the journey to the Universal Workforce Model possible now. While changing the fundamentals of workforce engagement is not an easy move, the journey should not be a sacrifice to the business. Innovations in work design, evolving strategic relationships between companies and solutions partners and developing expertise to reconfigure work illuminate and make the path forward possible.”

Ken Brotherston, Chief Executive of TALiNT Partners made exclusive comment on the launch of the book: “Companies face immense pressures as they adjust to the ever-changing workforce. What’s important moving forward is that they treat workforce challenges as a priority across the entire business. The concept of the Workforce Business Partner doesn’t replace the work that HR, hiring managers, recruiters, and staffing and talent solutions partners do, but it provides the impetus that enables them to work smarter and with more agility on the journey to a Universal Workforce Model.”

Arkadev Basak, Partner, Everest Group also made comment on the release: “For years, Procurement, HR and business leaders have been forced to struggle with an incredibly complex set of talent acquisition and workforce challenges. Applying a different mode of thought and a new model to rethink, reimagine, and redesign today’s workforce has the potential to bring the focus back on the work itself.”

 

Share this article on social media

Effective handling will determine future business growth

With the constant increase in cost of living and rising taxation, UK citizens are in for a very difficult time. But businesses are also impacted, and business owners may be at risk of forgetting the physical and emotional effect of this cost-of-living crisis on their workforce.

According to Sophie Wade, author of Empathy Works: The Key to Competitive Advantage in the New Era of Work, empathy is critical to assisting business leaders in understanding employees’ situations, adjusting their management styles, and providing them with appropriate support.

Wade provides the following tips for leading through this financial crisis:

  • Employers need to build a welcoming, inclusive, and supportive corporate culture where the workforce feels safe enough to share or reach out for help.
  • Leaders need to be empathetic, actively listen and show care and concern about their employees’ situations.
  • Create flexible workplace policies that help individuals improve their situations, for example, by reducing commuting costs by working from home.
  • Lead by example by embracing and demonstrating the benefits of cost-saving initiatives.
  • Provide benefits that help employees handle challenging circumstances, such as financial management talks and courses.

Sophie Wade, work futurist commented: “The pandemic catalysed significant changes in workplace environments. As leaders – whether at the senior executive level or as a team manager – we had to manage our businesses with a more human-centric orientation. Our corporate cultures have been transitioning from transactional to experiential, elevating trust and empathy as key values, as we recognize the challenges faced by the people we employ or work alongside and their greater emotional needs. While we are finally emerging from the COVID-19 crisis, the new cost of living crisis is having a significant impact on so many aspects of our lives. We are having to reconsider or limit how we light and heat our homes, commute to work and put food on the table with smaller pay checks as our contributions rise.”

“To manage this new crisis, we can learn from the last two years. As managers, we embraced empathy and practiced it with our teams to be more attuned to what they were going through. Now again, taking the same human-centric perspective, we need to listen to employees, understand their situations and needs, and nurture trust-based cultures that create a sense of belonging and community that can support them. We can recognise each person’s different points of view and circumstances as well as understand that some may be embarrassed to admit their financial and emotional struggles. The empathy that we elevated in our cultures and integrated into management practices during the pandemic should now be pervasive, ongoing, and consistent. Every employee should feel there is someone they feel comfortable to turn to, voice their concerns, and seek out the help they need.”

“I know many businesses are adapting to these new conditions. We must think about how our employees are coping as well. After the pandemic, workers are looking for stability not more strain. We must stop to consider what we can do to support our colleagues. Taking a human-centric, thoughtful, and empathetic approach, we can figure out how to improve workplace culture, benefits, and retention, and ensure the sustainable growth potential for our businesses.”

Clearly, leaders learning to empathise with their employees during this financial crisis is essential for ensuring a sustainable future for their businesses.

Share this article on social media

Over a year on from the IR35 changes are you compromising your talent acquisition strategy by providing a lack of choice for your flexible workforce? 

It’s now over 12 months since the Off Payroll Working IR35 reforms impacted the private sector.  Now is a good time to reflect on how the market reacted, and over a year on, how businesses are reviewing their approach to their contractor talent base. Let’s have a quick recap of the key change the legislation brought for hirers.   

Since April 2021, contractors can no longer choose their own IR35 status. Instead, the responsibility for determining status, was moved to the hirer.  The hirer needs to decide if the worker is inside or outside IR35 and then inform the supply chain of their decision.  This decision on status is very complex and many hirers have had concerns about getting the decision wrong and the potential implications for them financially and reputationally.   

Looking back it is clear that the vast majority of hirers have responded to the changes by adopting a risk averse position.  Many clients have chosen to simply avoid the question of determining status all together, and instead opted to classify all contractors as inside IR35. The consequence of this significant tax increase for contractors has led in many sectors, to an increase in contractor pay rates as hirers compete for talent.  The shortage of talent during a surge in recruitment post the pandemic has further fuelled pay rate inflation. 

As a consequence, we have seen the vast majority of contractors being forced to change the way they are engaged and stop using their personal service companies (PSC’s).  Instead, a significant number of contractors have been “taken on the books” and offered fixed term or permanent employment contracts by hirers. 

For many HR departments in April 2021, offering contractors full time employment with them directly felt like the lowest risk decision in light of the significant financial and reputational risks of getting IR35 wrong.  Whilst this may have been a quick fix, hirers are now understanding that moving contractors on to fixed term contracts, increases their employment risk rather than engaging them via a contractor management service such as an umbrella company.  Adding contractors to a permanent payroll can also increase complexity as it dramatically increases onboarding and offboarding as well as often complex pension arrangements and obviously the heightened risk of employment claims.  

At a time when the recruitment market is red hot with businesses looking to scale after the pandemic, many of these companies are finding that those contractors are leaving their fixed term contracts to seek contract work again.  For many contractors the reason they chose contracting was because of the variety of work they could take on and the flexibility to choose when and how they wish to work, not to simply reduce their tax bill. 

For hirers, they are also realising that the need for a degree of flexibility in their workforce is key now that many business strategies were ripped up in 2020 and companies are reshaping the size and make up of their workforce to ensure growth or even survival.  Some tech and other businesses now have less than 50% permanent headcount. 

At the start of 2022 we see many hirers, with an inhouse recruitment focus, looking to engage contingent workforce management specialists to ensure they can offer a full range of compliant payroll offerings to attract the right quality and mix of talent.  The right partner can facilitate the IR35 determination process and then provide the full range of payroll options.  They can also offer full indemnities against the risks associated with compliance, including IR35, so a hirer can have the assurance they are mitigating risk and not compromise on talent acquisition. 

So what does a full range of payroll options look like? 

Fixed term contract: this can of course be the most suitable option for some contractors. There is however no need to contract with these workers yourself, and the right workforce management partner should offer to engage these workers directly to remove you from risk and the burden of running payroll which can be complex.  For example, many contractors now expect to be able to pay significant sums into their own nominated pension provider and this significantly increases the payroll burden for businesses. 

Umbrella employment: an umbrella partner, or a preferred supplier list of chosen providers, can help give contractors choice in how they wish to be paid.  Your workforce management provider should be able to help guide you on a suitable process to ensure you pick compliant providers to work with and avoid rogue suppliers who increase your compliance risk. 

PSC’s (inside or outside of IR35): it is perfectly possible to still pay contractors via their limited company.  If you have an appropriate status determination then your workforce management partner should be prepared to be the fee payer and carry the risk.  Even if a contractor is determined as inside IR35, their PSC can still be paid and your partner will deduct the necessary taxes and pay across to HMRC. 

CIS: for those hirers in the construction industry, the Construction Industry Scheme or CIS for short allows any self-employed person to have tax deducted by an appropriate payroll partner and make payments to HMRC on the contractor’s behalf. The remaining tax liability for the year is then settled via the contractor’s self-assessment tax return (SATR). 

Choosing the right workforce management partner can ensure that a hirer provides a full range of choice to a contractor when looking to engage them on business-critical projects.  The right partner should also be prepared to indemnify the client from risk to ensure the business can be assured they are complaint.  IR35 may have disrupted the market, but as the dust settles the most agile hirers will beat their competition by attracting the best contractors to deliver business goals in 2022. 

 

*About giant  

For over 30 years giant has been a specialist in contractor management. Our flexible proprietary software and managed services platform, giant one, can manage contractors through-out their life cycle with you, from candidate attraction, screening and on boarding to timesheet management, billing, employer of record, payroll and payments. In the UK and internationally.  

 Uniquely, the giant one platform is suitable for any organisation with 20+ contractors so you don’t need to worry that your contractor numbers are too small to benefit.  

We take compliance with the complex regulations governing contractors very seriously. To underline our compliance commitment to you, we contractually indemnify you against any tax and employment risk when we manage your contractors.  

And we are independent. Unlike others we do not provide agency recruiting services and we have no affiliated companies that do either. Our neutrality ensures we advise you only, on what’s best for you and your contractors.

Share this article on social media