Recruitment agencies will be please to hear that the Recruitment and Employment Confederation is at the forefront for creating awareness about the impending Agency Workers Regulations by setting up a series of workshops.
The REC has already issued an AWR Implementation Pack, this was shortly followed by a webinar where 250 members logged on and asked questions about how these regulations will effect them and there clients.
Chief Executive, Kevin Green, stated that they requested the legislation early so that they can properly introduce and explain these changes to the industry. The need to understand this legislation is of paramount importance and the Workshops are a further tool to get the message out there.
The half-day workshops which are to be held in Birmingham, Leeds, London and Manchester from end of September until November. The response has been extremely good and the London event is fully booked and now waiting for additional dates.
Birmingham, September 30
Leeds, November 9
London, November 10
Manchester, November 18
For more details about this workshops, please visit http://www.rec.uk.com/awr/awrimplementationworkshops
Wales’s health board has revealed its use of healthcare recruitment agencies within its hospitals in June 2010. It claimed that they are spending up to £1m a month on replacement doctors as there is a continuous need to fill junior and middle grade doctors, although the shadow health minister Andrew RT Davies suggested this is in reality a spend of up to £3m.
There are currently more than 300 locums in West Wales and although the trusts are trying to deal with the staffing issues internally, the location and size of the hospital can be difficult to entice permanent staff and so locums provide the best source of maintaining a service.
Dr David Samuel, chair of the Welsh junior doctors committee added that although many new doctors will be coming in to fill in training posts in the coming months it does not distract from the fact that many rotas are heavily dependant on locum doctors.
My view on this matter is of course there has to be control over spending with regards to locums but the reality of the situation is that it is easy to pick on the things that people can see. I for one would be much happier if the money was continually spent on frontline services rather than the amount of wastage that occurs in the bureaucracy of the NHS, within admin, procedures, SHA’s, PCT’s, accounts, etc, etc. I think the coalition government is tackling this and I am interested to see if there changes have the desired affect.
With Ocado not having the best of starts on the London Stock Exchange, they have in fact been quick to tell us how they are going to create over 2000 jobs.
North Warwickshire is the destination for their new warehouse, which will please warehouse recruitment agencies in that area. Warwickshire council has approved the plans for the warehouse in the business park and the company that delivers food for Waitrose will spend £200 million on the 35 acre distribution centre.
The location of the new warehouse is ideal, with close access to the M42. The site will be able to distribute a further 180,000 to 200,000 customer orders per week.
The expected completion date for this complex is 2012.
Law enforcement recruitment agencies would be aware of a recent report about North Yorkshire police officers. It showed that many of these officers are now getting second jobs.
A strange fact but one that demonstrates a sign of the times, is that no police officer is allowed to have secondary jobs without the permission of the Chief Constable. The revelations that 185 Police officers have been granted permission, represents about 10% of the North Yorkshire police force.
There were certain assurances made by the force’s head of professional standards, stating that the force has a strict policy on secondary jobs and the requests are scrutinised to make sure that the officer can always work at there full potential as an officer and there can be absolutely no conflict of interest.
This report is unsurprising in the current climate and I can only presume that these numbers of officers or in fact any public worker having a secondary job, will only increase.
A sign of out times is that many healthcare recruitment agencies and education recruitment agencies are looking more and more at the private sector.
This in fact is probably the right move to make, with many public bodies now trying to outsource as much of there operations as possible, to make the cuts that are requested by them. Capita, the UK’s largest outsourcing firm, has already stated the number of local authority contracts, have increased dramatically and they expect this only to rise.
This increase could generate £60m for the firm, whilst the local authority will adhere to the 30% cuts in budget it needs to realise over the next 3 years. The new fiscal policies have also meant that many private firms are looking at the UK and rubbing there hands, even those as far away as India. Many companies see this as an opportunity as providing a cheaper option for the local authority and it wouldn’t be a surprise if some services are conducted overseas.
Unison spokesperson Karen Jennings, did put an air of caution with the private sector bonanza and especially pointed to healthcare. Her reservations were that if this route took momentum then private healthcare providers could eventually have more power than the NHS and start dictating which services will be provided based on profitability and what to charge for this service. A system that goes against the very principal of the NHS.
The emergency budget has come and gone and now the realisation of what effect these policies will have is setting in. For public sector recruitment agencies it does not make pleasant reading as predictions of unemployment rising to 3 million by 2012.
The forecast came from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). This is on the back of today’s unemployment figures dropping by 30,000 in the 3 months to May to 2.47m but with the expectation of substantial public Sector jobs to go, it was worked out that the economy would have to grow by 2.5% a year so that the private sector to accommodate all the job losses. The OBR predicts only a 1.2% this year and only reaching 2.5% after 2.12.
Police jobs are particularly under threat, with funding cuts that could lead up to 60,000 police officers to go by 2015. The figure was based on the Treasury warning departments that there could be as much as 40% cuts.
A separate study showed further worrying news for employment agencies, with jobs in construction, science and manufacturing at half the levels the same time last year.
It seems that with radical shake up happening across the public sector, we all have to brace ourselves for what can be a bumpy ride. If however in a few years time the finances and the operations of many public sector departments are running at similar levels but with half the costs involved then surely it will be seen as a victory for ConDem…. but that is a big if.
A report compiled by analysts at Civitas has worried manufacturing recruitment agencies by saying 1000’s of manufacturing jobs could be threatened over the coming years.
The threat stems from the burden of Green Energy policies that have been introduced to satisfy the European Union. Energy bills have already increased by 21% and this figure could rise to as much as 70% by 2020. The EU targets are set at 15% of the country’s energy must be via clean sources by 2020 and that greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 34% by the same date.
The report outlines that the costs involved in turning electrical intensive manufacturing to a more greener state, could prove to be crippling and it will be no surprise when these manufacturers decide to relocate overseas. Across the whole industry this could put 250,000 jobs at risk over the next 10 years.
In my view this is a hard balancing act Britain has to of course be seen to help the environment and cannot be blamed if there are higher electricity bills doing so. However maybe the government could act on other measures to counter act these costs, in the precarious state our economy is in at the moment I for one would be eager to keep as many companies happy with being set up in the UK and not put these jobs at risk.
The International Monetary Fund gave one of its largest downgrades for a developed country, when it lowered its growth forecast figures for Britain in 2011 from 2.5% growth to 2.1% growth.
The figures were less than the independent Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) which predicts a 2.3% growth in 2011. Recruitment agencies would have also been concerned by the OBR prediction that 600,000 public sector jobs could go.
The IMF added the global economy is actually recovering faster than initially expected and even increased its forecast for growth in the US and China. The problem they stressed was with Europe’s debt crises which will delay’s the continent’s growth.
IMF has asked governments to get to grips with their banks and push ahead with financial reforms. This is to encourage the flow of credit to the economy.
In response to this downgrade view, it is of course a concern but it is on the back of making fiscal changes that will hopefully tackle the debt in Britain. A catch 22 I suppose, but from my point of view this strategy will hopefully reward Britain in the future.
Graduate recruitment agencies would have been concerned by the government’s willingness to cut unprotected division’s by 25% over the next 4 years.
With 39,000 public sector `non- frontline` jobs filled by UK graduates yearly, then even if just a fifth of these jobs were lost due to funding that would double the amount of graduate unemployment. This warning came as 1 in 10 graduates failed to find work last summer in the midst of the recession.
The findings that came from the Higher Education Statistic Agency, also showed that the number of graduates working after 6 months dropped from 62% to 59%, that is around an addition 6,000 graduates. It was also shown that there was an increase in the number of graduates that took up further studies.
I obviously take this news with concern but of course with a certain realisation, just because the cuts will be happening in the public sector we have no way of knowing if the private sector could accommodate these individuals. The key to any economy is forward thinking people and that is what graduates can supply. I believe that although there would be areas of detrimental affect from this budget, other gateways will open.
Universities minister David Willets said that these figures show that employers are continuing to recruit graduates in large numbers.
Oil and gas recruitment agencies would have heard yesterday, the Senior BP executive addressing the staff in Aberdeen reassuring them that there jobs and the North Sea operations will be safe and BP have no plans to stop this.
The main worry was that with Mexico crises now nearing £2.65 billion may affect other areas of BP operations. BP reaffirmed that they are still on track to deal with the crises and believe they will meet the timeframe of 3 months but this will not cause them to sell assets to fund this such as the North Sea operation.
Elsewhere BP is still going ahead with there Russian venture, which again will not be affected by the Mexico crises.
