What is Contract Recruitment?
Put simply, contract recruitment is the provision of a worker on a short or longer-term basis. This can be either for a specific role or project, or for a fixed time period or for open-ended time period.
Many of the clients that ProTech Recruitment work with will have a short-term need for a worker where they don't want to take on a permanent employee as there is insufficient long-term need for this but there is nonetheless an immediate requirement for a worker to come and provide work services. This could be for a number of potential reasons, eg due to a project over-running, covering annual leave, covering or a period of long-term sickness, maternity leave, someone leaving the business at short notice and/or a sudden increase in the amount of work coming in that requires a rapid increase in head-count to manage it.
In this instance a business could look to recruit a contract worker who would be engaged on the assignment for a defined period of time, enabling the business to continue hitting production deadlines or other targets and ensuring that there is sufficient workforce to achieve all the business's objectives.
Before ProTech supplies any contract or temporary workers they will work closely with the client to confirm the brief before then identifying the right candidate(s) to fulfil their requirements. Once the right person has started work the worker will submit their hours worked each week to the hirer for authorisation which will be ProTech's authority to pay the worker and bill the client for the hours worked. Whilst the worker is working at a client site they remain under the full supervision and control of the client, meaning that the client is able to best direct them as appropriate to ensure that their workload is covered.
The rate paid by the client includes all statutory payments ie employers National Insurance Contributions, Workplace Pension Contributions, Holiday Pay etc, allowing the client to focus primarily on their day-job.
When would you use Contract Recruitment services?
There are a wide variety of reasons why a company may wish to do so.
For instance, a permanent employee who is either highly skilled or very senior could leave the business and in order to replace them long term it may be appropriate to employ a temporary worker whilst looking for the long term replacement. A temporary worker would allow someone fully qualified to take over the role while a retained or contingent search could be undertaken for a new permanent employee.
Alternatively, the business may have secured a large project of work and will need additional resource to ensure they can deliver on time. There can also be shifts in demand throughout the year which can impact upon businesses where employing a contract work force can effectively help them manage these periods effectively. For example, during the 2020 pandemic ProTech supplied Smiths Medical with contract workers. SmithsMedical were a part of the #VentilatorChallengeUK and as the pandemic worsened considerably over a short amount of time, they were tasked by the UK Government to ramp up production of their patented ventilators to help save the lives of many UK citizens. Due to this requirement, they required a large number of highly skilled workers at short notice and would be unsure exactly how long they would need to maintain production of the ventilators and therefore keep the workers employed. The partnership with ProTech Recruitment allowed them a flow of highly skilled workers to keep up pace with the manufacturing of the ventilators but with the flexibility to increase or decrease their number of contract or temporary workers depending on the flexing circumstances.
What are the advantages of contract recruitment?
- Creates a flexible workforce
- Contractors can be turned 'on' and 'off' quickly to match fluctuating demand or circumstances unlike permanent employees.
- The client is only required to pay for the duration that they have the contractor which can be highly effective if there is a solid understanding on the length and breadth of work.
- Allows the client to manage their cash flow effectively over time, in periods of uncertainty or low work they can easily reduce the number of contractors
- ProTech can offer full project cycle cover to their clients, from research and development all the way to manufacturing and production
- Contractors can bring highly skilled industry expertise
- Client will have no increased permanent head count
Why use ProTech for your contract recruitment needs?
ProTech have over 30 years of contract recruitment experience and have knowledgeable recruiters with over 100 years combined technical recruitment experience. This amount of time in the market has enabled ProTech to develop a 200,000+ strong candidate pool so we can reach out to candidates immediately to discuss potential openings due to our prior contact with them.
Plus, we've worked with some of our clients for over 30 years, demonstrating that not only are we great at what we do, but that we stay on top of changes in the market and in the culture of temporary and contract workers to continue to provide workers effectively for all of our clients.
We have two dedicated teams focusing on Engineering and Technical and Life Sciences recruitment with strong and specific industry experience.
Taking Away the Admin Burden
Workers will simply complete a weekly timesheet, either online or on paper as preferred by the client. The client then confirm that the hours have been worked satisfactorily and from that point onwards ProTech dealing with the entire pay and bill process including making all statutory deductions and payments to HMRC.
Our payroll and accounts team is 'in-house', enabling us to provide a personal service to workers and clients, allowing the worker and the client to focus on the work in hand at the client site itself.
What do I do if I think I may require a contractor?
Simply give us a call or contact us via the 'Speak to our Experts' button at the top of our website site. Our helpful and knowledgeable recruiters can talk you through the entire process and give you an understanding of how everything operates and answer any concerns that you might have. We look forward to hearing from you.
PS Don't just take our word for it - view our Google Reviews page to see feedback from both candidate and clients.