By Tracy Clark, Business Development Manager for Matrix SCM

Right now, there is a critical need for private health and social care organisations to resource temporary and freelance skills. In particular, there is a big demand for doctors, nurses, social care workers, managers, administrators, cleaning staff and many other technical and professional roles. These skills are needed to provide value for money for customers, keep facilities sanitised, manage the care need of an ageing customer base, tailor services more effectively to individuals and deal with a backlog of care needs following Covid-19.

The problem is that all this is happening in a period when skills are in potentially short supply post-Brexit. There are also several other challenges specific to recruitment that associations need to overcome, including:

• The need to manage foreign worker rules 
• IR35 compliance 
• Modern slavery issues
• Controlling temporary recruitment costs
• And managing the time it takes to deal with multiple agencies 

What are the options for managing recruitment more effectively?

All of this uncertainty is putting pressure on private providers that need to recruit quickly to fill key temporary roles. The big question now is this: do you have the right structure in place to fulfil those needs, or do you need to consider a fresh approach?

There are three main options on the table:

Stick with the status quo

Currently, many hiring managers in the sector operate through an informal network of agencies. This approach has several problems. It limits the size of the talent pool available. It also makes it difficult to manage the time and cost associated with managing multiple agencies or get visibility of compliance with IR35 and AWR regulations.

Enter into a Master Vendor relationship

The traditional alternative is entering into a Managed Service Provider (MSP) agreement that offers a single point of contact. However, private health and social care organisations need to beware here. MSPs are built around lead agencies that tend to hold on to new orders for too long in an attempt to find their own candidates. As a result, they often struggle to fulfil all role requirements.

Try a Neutral Vendor approach

The other alternative is a Neutral Vendor Managed Service Provider approach that doesn’t have a vested interest in any single agency getting the business. Overall, the Neutral Approach offers benefits over the MSP model that include:

• Greater access to a diverse supply chain of suppliers
• More options for filling specialist vacancies
• Increased ability to scale up and down rapidly
• Guaranteed compliance checks
• Greater visibility over spend and usage of agency
• Complete transparency in pricing

The nine key questions you should ask as you review your options

At Matrix SCM, we use our Neutral Vendor approach to manage over £650m in recruitment spend for over 100 clients across the public and private sectors. We have also demonstrated that our model delivers results that are measurable in terms of both profit and efficiency, including: 

• Average 11% cashable savings per client
• 100% compliance before placements start
•  99.6% fill rate to client specified timeframes
• Zero off-contract spend

 We also offer a high level of account management that will help you fulfil your day-to-day needs and provide input on recruitment strategy. For example, we recently worked closely with Anchor Hanover and Marie Curie to improve compliance, provide complete control over placements and deliver total visibility of the agency worker population.

These benefits are clear. That said, changing the way you manage recruitment can feel like a big decision – especially in these pressurised times. So with this in mind I have put together a list of the nine key questions that will help review your recruitment options.

 Ask yourself:

1. Do our existing recruitment arrangements put us at risk of not being able to fill vital temporary and freelance roles?

2. Do we have full visibility of the worker population?

3. Do we have visibility of what we are spending?

4. Do we ever struggle with managing compliance and IR35 as recruitment increases?

5. Are we spending too many hours managing multiple relationships with recruitment agencies?

6. Are we spending too much time on finding missing POs, incorrect timesheets and invoicing?

7. Do we have standardisation on pay and agency margins?

8. Does our current approach support all stakeholders within the business?

9. Would we benefit from a new partner that can help us manage our agency supply chain more effectively and impartially – and deliver us cashable savings?

Explore further

If you have answered some of these questions negatively, it may well be time to consider a new approach that will help you manage your recruitment more efficiently and effectively.

 We’ve recently produced a buyer's guide for private health and social care organisations that will help you explore the choices available to you in more detail – or you can contact me for an assessment of your needs.