By Richard Gelder, Client Engagement Lead for Construction & Property

 According to the RICS Facilities Management Survey from Autumn 2021, 79% of facilities managers and contractors expect workloads to increase significantly over the next twelve months.

This is creating a real recruitment headache.

Demand is outstripping supply in many areas including temporary maintenance engineers, cleaning operatives and the facilities assistants needed to fulfil new contracts and maintain facilities.

 Longer term, new technical resources are also needed to deliver zero carbon buildings, improve workplace experiences, and bring facilities that have been empty or in partial use back up to speed.

 All of this is happening at a time when the recruitment market is become increasingly restricted. Over a million EU-born workers have already left the UK.  Other issues including IR35, foreign workers rules, modern slavery, controlling costs and the need to demonstrate social value are making the task of recruitment even more complex.

FM businesses now need to ask – will our current Preferred Supplier List (PSL) or Master Vendor model help us to overcome these challenges? Or do we need a different, more innovative approach that breaks away from the way we’ve always done things?

Here’s my view on what your current options are – and why a new approach based on the Neutral Vendor model is now vital.

1     Expand your existing Preferred Supplier List

PSLs are currently the most common and best-understood option for temporary recruitment in the FM sector.

The main problem with the PSLs is that you only have restricted access to temporary skills needed to cover new projects. It’s also potentially costly. Hiring managers usually fill gaps their PSLs can’t fulfil by going off-contract whether they have approval or not.

PSLs are also a time-consuming and difficult to manage.

You still take responsibility for managing recruitment, relationships with supplier agencies, compliance and processing individual timesheets and invoices across multiple agencies. If you decide to extend your PSL yourself to meet new demand, these problems only become bigger and more time-consuming.   

2     Master Vendor Single Supplier or Managed Service Provider (MSP) agreements

Master Vendor is a more efficient approach, already adopted by some FM businesses. It outsources recruitment to a large brand agency which manages a supply chain of other recruitment agencies. The main advantage of this model is that you deal with a single point of contact and have access to a much wider talent pool.

 However, the lead agency has a vested interested in its own success and is likely to submit its own agency and candidates in the first instance. Even if those further along the supply chain are more suitable for the role or represent better social value. As a result, Master Vendors often struggle to fulfil all role requirements. They also tend to hold on to new orders for too long to find their own candidates.

3     Bring the process back in-house

Some FM businesses, frustrated with the limitations of PSL and Master Vendor models, are now reverting back to solving their temporary staff recruitment issues by expanding on the permanent recruitment capability they have inhouse. The challenge they find with this approach is that it requires significant new investment required in talent and systems. It also gives them limited ability to scale and achieve cost efficiencies.

4     Move to a Neutral Vendor Managed Service Provider

 The best option for solving these challenges is to adopt a Neutral Vendor Managed Service Provider. This approach gives you access to a wider pool of agencies and temporary skills without having to go off-contract. It also solves compliance headaches, because Neutral Vendors provide proactive and transparent checks that most agencies don’t provide.

 The Neutral Vendor approach is also a far better alternative to Managed Vendors that have their own recruitment agencies and have a vested interest in placing their own candidates.

 Choosing a Neutral Vendor gives you:

• Increased choice and quality of candidates
• Greater access to a diverse supply chain of suppliers that delivers against social value requirements
• More options for filling specialist vacancies
• Increased ability to scale up and down rapidly
• Guaranteed compliance checks before candidates start a project
• Management information for predicting trends and recruitment needs
• Greater visibility over spend and usage of agencies
• Transparency in pricing

We can solve your recruitment challenges

At Matrix SCM, we operate a fully Neutral Vendor approach. We also have a pre-approved supply chain of 2,500 UK recruitment agencies that gives us a complete overview of the market.

Many of these agencies are SME local suppliers that meet social value requirements.We also provide technology and experienced account managers that deliver the management information you need for predicting trends and resourcing needs – something you simply don’t get with PSL or Master Vendor agreements.

Ultimately, with our model you get much greater insight into the resourcing picture – so you can recruit temporary agency workers for the right cost, with guaranteed compliance, and with full visibility of the agency worker population.

Find out more

If you would like to find out more about our approach, get in touch with us through the email address below. Or, to find out more about how how we can help facilities management businesses overcome their recruitment challenges, download our new guide for report here.