Employment Agency complaints and how to prevent them

September 30th, 2024 | Industry News

Nobody wants complaints, and the increase of complaints about Employment Agencies in the UK has been astonishing – up from 781 in 2015/16 to 2,300 in 2022/23. So what’s gone wrong and is there any way that recruitment software can help?

Avoiding Recruitment Agency complaints

The Employment Standards Agency (EAS) says that the bulk of complaints relate to people trying to get money from their employment agency – there are three main reasons for this:

1. Being charged fees when seeking work
2. Deliberate non-payment
3. Administrative error

The first of these is illegal and will result not just in the EAS recovering money from the agency for the candidate but also in criminal prosecution. In 2021/22 the EAS investigated 17 employment agencies or other forms of employment business and initiated two prosecutions and two prohibitions. A prohibition prevents people from operating a recruitment business for a set period of time. One individual was banned for three years and the other for eight years, with a further two cases still under consideration for prohibition.

The second two reasons are likely to be much reduced by using recruiting software. Deliberate non-payment can result from a number of recruitment agency operations – for example a temporary staffer not completing their hours of work. Using recruitment software UK focused to ensure you comply with regulations and communicate effectively with temp staff can ensure this kind of complaint never arises.

The final complaint – administrative error – is also substantially reduced through effective recruitment agency software use. Busy agencies, staff sickness, new team members not fully understanding how to administer their roles – all these can lead to errors that result in slowdowns, problems and complaints. Having web-based recruitment software allows your team to do their admin wherever they are, not just when they get back to the office, which is a major cause of people forgetting, or rushing, over administrative tasks. Online recruitment software has another advantage; agencies can automate regular processes so that both clients and candidates have frequent, communications about the progress of their employment journey, including payment, taxation and legal information.

Recruitment website design

A final cause for complaint can be ‘misleading information’ which is most often made about advertisements and websites. Employment misinformation may be an EAS issue or a Trading Standards one, depending on whether the inaccurate information relates to a single employment issue (EAS) or an overall misleading claim (Trading Standards). A good way to reduce the risk of complaints in this area is to use a recruitment website template that is specifically designed to meet legal requirements as well as delivering an outstanding experience for clients and candidates. At Recruit So Simple we have a complete range of website templates designed to meet the needs of every kind of recruitment agency.