It has never been a better time to be a freelance contract worker within the UK, growing numbers of agencies are becoming more and more reactive to the countries growing demand for a more flexible workforce.
We have seen over a 40% growth in our business each year for the past 2 years, which is a clear sign of a change in which hirers are addressing their recruitment needs. With growth, comes further burdens to continue to grow unless processes are in place to support these agencies.
According to the latest Recruitment & Employment Confederation’s Recruitment Industry Trends report, there are an estimated 1 million temporary agency workers on assignments every day across the UK, this has grown by 14% since 2017, and it is estimated to continue to grow by 4.6% in 2019/20, 3.0% in 2020/21 and 5.9% in 2021/22.
With more than 31,140 recruitment agencies operating across the UK and employing a total of 119,000 members of staff proves that the need for a compliant outsourced payroll provider to assist this rapidly expanding sector, has never been so important. With more and more agencies adopting an outsourced approach, rather than in-house payroll that puts a growing strain on recruitment agency payroll and for a wide range of reasons, as there’s a clear and growing burden on internal payroll to cope with a ballooning workforce.
That in itself might be all the reason your recruitment company needs to outsource payroll but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
For recruiters, it’s all too common to find that virtually every worker on the books has a different contract and keeping track of all of them can be extremely challenging. Small wonder then, more recruitment companies are outsourcing payroll, handing over the complexities of payroll management so they can focus on finding the next placement.
It’s not simply the number of workers that increases the payroll challenge – it’s the growing variety in worker status or contract type. When your workforce includes employed, zero hours, self-employed, umbrella workers and more, it’s all too easy to lose track and running payroll becomes bewilderingly complex.
The changes in 2016 regarding IR35 workers within the Public Sector has proved so successful, the implementation of the same legislation has now been cleared and ready to be deployed from 6th April 2020 within the Private Sector. This is seeing an extraordinary volume of contract workers operating their own PSC/Limited Company that fall inside of IR35 to have to register with a traditional umbrella provider to allow for the continuation of their contract as set out by the hiring end Client.
Most industries have plenty of red tape to contend with. But few can match recruitment for touching on so many areas of tax, NI and employment legislation. Handing payroll over to a dedicated payroll provider means compliance for HMRC deductions becomes their problem, not yours. As rules change, your payroll provider should be on top of it, and you’ll have recourse against them if they’re not.
Keep payroll in-house and all that burden falls squarely on your shoulders. It’s not simply the cost of employing staff to process payroll. It’s the cost of errors and rework. It’s the perpetual risk of fines for non-compliance and the cost of paying them when the worst happens.
There is, of course, a cost to outsourcing your recruitment payroll. But for the clients who work with us, the many benefits of outsourcing make it the simplest of decisions.
Without dedicated payroll expertise, it can simply be too much to process. It is therefore, far better to entrust such matters to a payroll professional.
Talk to us now to discover the benefits of outsourcing payroll for your recruitment business.
T: 01252 863700 | W: www.epayme.co.uk | E: info@epayme.co.uk