Seven recruitment agencies were in the Sunday’s Times `100 Best Companies to Work For 2010` and eight recruitment agencies were in Sunday’s Times `100 Best Small Company to Work For 2010`.

Recruitment agencies in 100 Best Companies to work for 2010:

Office Angels – ranked 4th
Pertemps People Development Group – ranked 19th
Ingeus – ranked 38th
Pulse – ranked 46th
Ranstad – ranked 73rd
Pertemps Recruitment Partnership – ranked 81st

Recruitment agencies in 100 Best Small Companies to Work for 2010-03-09

Practicus – ranked 13th
Origin HR Consulting – ranked 28th
GCS – ranked 32nd
Penta Consulting – ranked 33rd
Taskmaster Resources – ranked 48th
Red Commerce – ranked 53rd
Portfolio Payroll – ranked 59th
Medicare First – ranked 84th

If you put this in context of what has gone on with the economy and the recruitment market, this is fantastic news and all I can do is congratulate each one of these agencies that have made the list. It is good to hear that so many employees enjoy working in this industry and that employers put a lot of effort to not just maintaining their staff but to encourage them to enjoy their work.

The REC in conjunction with the KPMG announced there findings for February 2010 and they made for interesting reading. Recruitment agencies would be pleased to here that permanent staff placements increased last month making this its strongest increase since July 2007.

The Temping market showed a slight increase in the amount being billed, although this increase was its slowest for 3 months.

Overall the market looks to be growing quite healthily and IT recruitment agencies would be pleased to hear this area is showing particularly strong growth. The only `but` in all this is the impending slow down of the public sector. Many healthcare recruitment agencies and public sector recruitment agencies, realise whilst in the recession money was being pumped into public sector, this will change and radical reforms will have to occur for costs to be reduced, how and when this will occur is of course unknown but there is no escaping the fact that this will have to happen at some point.

Gross Domestic Product is the basic measure of the a country’s economic output and today the Office and National Statistics revised it figure from 0.1% for the final 3 months of 2009 to 0.3%.

This represents that the country’s economy is in fact growing and so therefore means officially we are out of the recession. However this may not be the whole picture.

Analyst feel that a more accurate picture will be shown once investment figures are included, this is on the back of the ONS data stating that UK business investment fell by 24.1% in that quarter of 2009. Therefore once this data is included into the GDP figures it could be a case that it will show we have never actually left the recession.

Recruitment agencies are sensing some sort of economic revival, with more vacancies and placements being recorded, but the job market as is the economy is on tender hooks. We should not forget that the UK has borrowed roughly 12% of its total economy, this is the same as the Greece economy, however due to the UK’s solid track record, there is a feeling we will be able to cope a lot better with this debt than say Greece can.

So are we out of the recession?

I would suggest not yet, with so many unknowns, even to the extent that these revised GDP figures could still be false. It is a precarious situation our economy is in, we need further proof that our economy is gaining strength and only until then can we really start addressing the UK public debt.

Europe’s largest pharmaceutical company, which currently employs 16,000 people in the UK, has come into fire recently when they announced restructuring plans that would result in 100’s of research and development jobs within the UK coming to an end.

The reason for this is partly due to the fact that there are no new plans to develop depression and pain medicines, something of a sore point at the moment for Glaxo. Which has had to pay £63 million in out of court lawsuits relating to a specific antidepressant drug they make called Paxil, the drug was actually linked to an increase of risk of suicide.

Within all this bad news, the `Patent Box` could be the answer. This was introduced by the government in the 2009 budget. The `Patent Box` basically states that if you are a company based on innovation activities and obtains patents in the UK, then corporation tax will be reduced to 10%.

This is of course excellent news for Glaxo, which obviously patents all there drugs. On the back of this news, recruitment agencies will be pleased to know that jobs will be now created for a new biopharmaceutical factory in Greenfield manufacturing centre. This could be at least 600 in this sector and 400 elsewhere within the company.

Andrew Witty, chief executive, stated we are doing this project as a direct result of the government’s commitment, by creating the `Patent Box`.

Glaxo will use pharmaceutical recruitment agencies to find many of these candidates and so is definitely good news for the agencies that operate in this sector.

Gordon Brown addressed an audience today with these very words. His statement was clear in his decision to concentrate on growing the economy rather than focusing on cutting Britain’s budget deficit.

In a speech that attacked the view’s of David Cameron and cited there dislike to his own views as detrimental to the economic recovery. It is Gordon’s Brown intention to continue its fiscal policies and although this may add to the UK deficit, the strong belief is that we need to tackle this problem by growing the economy to a point where it can then cut the deficit without pushing the economy into another recession.

If you are an recruitment agency, especially public sector employment agencies, this would be deemed as good news. The idea of trying to grow the economy will mean more jobs and placements.

The only problem I envisage with this strategy is yes it is bold and seems like strong action. However as with many comments that Gordon Brown has said in the past, they are not always actually followed as they initially sounded. I await with much curiosity how we hope to keep growing as an economy, keep spending and then able to reduce this deficit.

Employment agencies have received some positive news from a recent survey done by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG. The demand for staff seems to be at its highest since 2007 and although not all sectors will grow at the same rate, there is signs that many sectors are beginning to find their feet again.

James Caan has a number of interests within the recruitment industry and has spoken about how his portfolio of companies are all beginning to show more jobs and more activity. One of these companies is Webrecruit and Phil Roebuck, managing director, stated that the number of vacancies they are now working on a daily basis has increased 10 fold.

Within the REC report, it is good news for the IT recruitment agency, which showed that this sector had most demand at the moment. This is of course no surprise as in a recession this is probably an area you would look to reduce spending in and in a recovery, one of the first to be looked at.

James Caan other companies, such as The Resourcing Group has posted its best ever net profit and Eden Brown reported that the permanent job market is rebounding. This all of course suggests that the job market is moving in the right direction.

I can imagine 2010 being an important year to the recruitment market as there are many unknowns still and just where the natural level should be for vacancies and fill rates.

If you are an employment agency, you have probably had one eye on the outcome of the Agency Workers Directive and how the new regulations will affect your business.

One of the main questions that were awaiting response from the government was if limited company contractors are excluded from the new regulations. The response is rather different than first thought, it states that limited company contractors are not exempt from the new regulations unless they can show that they the individual is running a business and that the contract is between the hirer and the business and not the individual.

This makes for messy administration and more work for say construction recruitment agencies that use limited company contractors all the time. The idea is to eliminate a lot of loose arrangements, agency workers have, by operating as a limited company as a means to increase income and could well have an adverse affect on umbrella companies that set up and run these limited companies for contractors.

Umbrella companies are probably still feeling the affects of changes in policies for contractors having to be directors of their own limited companies rather than a small percentage holder. Also with news recently that JSA Services owing £10.6 million pounds to the HMRC after being audited and leaving many contractors unpaid, will question contractors’ belief in these payroll companies.

I can only add that, whilst recruitment agencies and to a certain extent umbrella companies have had an easy ride say 10 years ago, there are now so many regulations and red tape that the amount of work that agencies need to do to understand all the legislation will almost allow no time for recruitment itself….