Standards in Recruitment (SIR), the UK’s only independent compliance accreditation programme specifically designed for recruitment businesses has produced a free compliance guide.  

Six of the best: Commonly overlooked compliance procedures and how to address them. This guide has been written to help recruitment businesses, whatever their size, to operate within the relevant legislation.  The free guide is available to download from the SiR website at www.standardsinrecruitment.com/advice. Commenting on the guide, John Randall, engagement director for SiR said “Being compliant does not need to be complex but sometimes it’s easy to overlook small yet important processes. We are not trying to teach recruitment businesses to ‘suck eggs’ but we understand that when a company is rushing to meet deadlines, sometimes things can get overlooked.

I believe the six examples we have identified will help recruitment businesses, whatever their size, operate within the relevant regulations.

“The guide offers real-life examples that recruitment businesses will recognise. Each example outlines a typical scenario and concludes with how they can be addressed. For example, putting contractual terms in place with clients. Without this being done correctly, there is always going to be a risk in a whole range of areas, not least liability.” Randall concludes “Standards in Recruitment (SiR) has produced this guide to in response to the increasingly compliance-driven world in which recruitment businesses now have to operate and we are confident that businesses will find it a helpful resource”. This offers real-life examples that recruitment businesses need to be aware of to ensure that they operate within the current relevant legislation for the recruitment industry. Each example outlines a typical scenario and concludes with ways they can be addressed.

The topics included in the guide are: 

• Agreeing terms with clients
• Conduct Regulations opt outs
• Registering with the ICO
• Identifying the party you are dealing with
• Checking candidates’ right to work
• Website compliance

Standards in Recruitment (SIR), is the UK’s only independent compliance accreditation programme and has been developed specifically for recruitment businesses to provide independent and impartial evidence of quality assurance. SiR developed its standard in collaboration with industry stakeholders including recruitment agencies, client organisations and legal experts. The SiR programme has been created to reflect the increasingly compliance-driven world in which recruitment businesses now have to operate and working through the SiR ‘compliance pathway’ will result in immediate benefits for a company by:

confirming that their management and operational systems are robust, meet their business needs and customer obligations, minimise risk and maximise operational potential, thereby achieving better overall performance and reducing overheads through improved efficiencies; ensuring that the legal documents such as employment contracts, terms and conditions etc. meet current regulations; giving a company a valuable USP by allowing them to display the SiR ‘mark of excellence’ logo on their company website and in their marketing collateral, helping them to increase market-awareness amongst clients and candidates; and setting them above their competitors by assuring their customers and candidates that they are an effective, trusted and highly compliant recruitment business.