Roythornes Solicitors case study

Staffing and Payroll

Manage Processes and Reduce Costs of Staffing and Payroll

Our focus is in three main areas:

• Strategic Resourcing and Workforce Planning
• Agency Staff and Recruitment Costs
• HMRC Compliance, HR & Payroll provision and software

All successful businesses invest in their people. Estimating required resources, identifying the right individuals, giving them the tools to do their job, compensating them fairly and paying them on time are all vital elements of having a focused and engaged workforce.

It’s therefore vitally important to ensure that a strategic approach is taken to ensuring they are provided for in a way that guarantees compliance with your organisations’ standards, but which doesn’t break your bank.

More and more organisations are adopting customer-centric models and that means a highly adaptable and changing workforce. Having the means to manage and motivate them, ensure they have the right training and equipment and the right working environment are all equally important.

Our experts are able to draw upon their experience and provide their specific expertise to provide strategic consulting around staffing decisions, advice on how and where to recruit candidates in the right way – and for the right price – and ensure they are all paid on time, and you as an employer are fully compliant.

Cost Areas Include

• Agency Recruitment Costs
• Payroll
• Permanent
• Specialist
• Temporary Staff

Workforce planning and consultancy

Organisations need to value their staff as their number one asset. Continually assessing and improving the workforce, in line with the needs and operations of the business and its customers ensures any organisation can meet its business objectives and its customer needs.

For most organisations, staffing comprises a mixture of full and part time, and permanent and temporary staff. Sometimes organisations outsource either on or offshore to help supplement a strategic function, such as customer services. Our experience and expertise allows us to assist organisations with complex multi-site UK wide or international resource planning in order to maximise efficiency, reduce costs and meet demand.

In today’s volatile market conditions, more and more organisations are reliant on temporary labour. As well as being more expensive than a typical full time employee, temporary staff can be less engaged and less invested, but they are heavily relied upon to address short term needs, often triggered by staff attrition or spikes in business. It is therefore important to regularly review strategic sourcing requirements and have relevant data and management information to report on. In order to make informed decisions about current skill levels, future requirement and dependencies on third parties this is all vital. We can help to identify, on-board and implement solutions which support the full cycle of staff recruitment, development and performance management.

Staffing Services

Our staffing review ensures all aspects of our clients’ agency staffing needs and recruitment costs are considered. For many companies the use of Agency Staff is a commercially viable solution to meeting peak workloads. Whilst it is more expensive than permanent staff in the longer term, it does offer a cost effective solution in the short to medium term, to meet situations of high demands or where temporary cover may be required.

We are experts in reviewing the cost of agency staff, both the upfront charge out rate and a review of the ‘hidden’ costs which contribute towards the agency charge out rate. Additionally, we review contract terms, the management of agency staff and assist in improving the administration required for timesheets. With regards to recruitment costs, significant savings can be made to both the charges levied by agencies and the recruitment process, increasing both savings and the ability to better manage the whole recruitment process.

From deciding that agency staff are required, to the commencement of work can be an administrative burden. When allied with the day to day management of tasking, work schedules management of hours worked, holiday pay, sick pay, clocking in, working time directive and rates of pay it can indeed be an irksome burden for a company. Our review encompasses all of the above and aims to deliver a sustainable easier working solution which is both robust and delivers significant savings for our clients. Recruitment charges by agencies are generally based on a percentage of the final salary of the individual recruited, much like an estate agents selling a house. And like estate agents, most companies struggle to understand how the charge relates to the work undertaken by the agency. Our review ensures value for money is delivered as well as significantly improving the visibility and management of the whole recruitment process.

Agency Staff

From candidate selection, pre-employment training, service level requirements and contracts, our role is to ensure the administration and management of agency staff is completed as smoothly and expediently as possible whilst saving money and ensuring the calibre of the candidates meets the client’s need.

As important as negotiating a better charge rate for services is the agency rate itself, which is made up of several components including; the basic rate of pay, holiday pay, employers national insurance, pension contribution and agency margin – these combined make the agency charge rate and we review each element.

Agency Staff
recruitment costs

Recruitment Costs

Recruitment Fees are normally based on the final salary of the candidate and are typically charged as a flat percentage rate. We often uncover examples of agencies using different charge rates within the same organisation. This can leave the client exposed to a variety of additional charges, such as the situation where the same candidate is put forward by 2 different agencies and the employer having to pay both agencies. The whole charging mechanism employed by agencies often leaves employers feeling the charges are not proportionate to the work involved.

This is where we can help.

We review not only the typical recruitment costs but also; short-term contracts, the charges associated with offering a temporary staff a permanent position, penalty charges if the individual is deemed to be unsuitable, the additional fee incurred for extending temporary contracts and so on.

Many companies feel they have no overall visibility of the contracts in place, no benchmark to measure the performance of an agency, unable to establish if the agency is delaying the process or their own staff – we have the means to streamline the whole process, ensuring the selection process runs as smoothly as possible and we can introduce a few bells and whistles which can make a big difference. We aim to deliver a much smoother process with greater visibility, greater accountability and significant savings.

Payroll and HR Software

From the hiring of the first employee, all organisations need to be compliant with the myriad of HMRC legislation and confident that there are systems and procedures in place that allow that employees to get paid on time.

Typically HR procedures around hiring, employee contracts, taxation, National Insurance and payroll are an administrative burden. Often, organisations outsource, or leverage technology to provide solutions for these issues. Automated processes, driven by appropriate software can be vital tools to improve efficiency and reduce time spent. It’s important that these solutions are up-to-date, meet your organisational standards and needs and deliver the service you require at a competitive rate.

We often find that organisations do not fully understand the various considerations when choosing and specifying such a system and our expertise can help to ensure that the solution is both selected and used optimally. Our objective and independent review in this area cover Payroll systems, wider HR Employee and Applicant Tracking Systems and even Expenses software and services.

Independent of all suppliers and guided only by your interests, our objective, forensic assessment leads to a considered report of recommendations, which allow you to make clear decisions from a position of knowledge.

Get in touch to find out more about how we can save you money on staffing and payroll.

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