Role Of Recruitment Agencies In Social Care And Hospitality Sector

The Roles of Recruitment Agencies in Social Care and Hospitality Sector

write a report addressing the following questions:

 Identify the role of a recruitment agency.

Discuss the reasons why an employer in this sector would choose to use recruitment agency.

Discuss the criteria an employer should use to select an agency to recruit for them . You should refer to any relevant best practices in the sector. For
example; Legal implication, cost, trust, expertise, market reputation and so on.

Analyse what HR department and agencies can do to build a good relationship between them. In your discussion, you should include equal
opportunities, health and safety , data management and related operational issues.

The roles of recruitment agencies are common for all the sectors, be it social care, hospitality, or retail sector. To be specific, in the social care setting the recruitment agencies take up the responsibility to provide the social care organizations and their employers with the most suitable candidates with the required skills and competencies. The recruitment agencies acquire the list of vacancies from various employers, and place suitable attractive advertisements over internet and other places as well. These agencies also seek for new resumes being uploaded. The agencies would send those resumes in an edited version to the employers (Raiden, Dainty and Neale, 2008). The recruitment agencies in the hospitality sector are concerned about suggesting the organizations with the most appropriate candidates for crucial projects and roles without creating stress on the HRM department. The key roles of these agencies are performing employee screening as well as testing, conducting flexibility staffing, matching the requisites of employers and organizations to provide them with the best human resource possible. It is their responsibility to ensure that only the most deserving candidates are recommended to the employers to meet the required goals of the social care environment (Richards, 2008).
Recruiting individuals within social care setting or any other sector requires immense amount of time, and for several organizations it is a tedious process to conduct effective recruitment and selection processes (Parry and Kelliher, 2008). Besides, the employer needs to go through numerous resumes before selecting any particular candidate for specific roles. This may sound quite impersonal but it is the reality. Thus, organizational employers particularly in this respect any social acre organization would approach recruitment agency to get the tedious tasks done smoothly and effectively without delay or loss. The agencies would fill some specific needs. Organizations need the right people to apply to the vacant jobs, but most of the time they lack adequate time to do so. Then they approach recruitment agencies to do all the work for them, so that the employers can spend more time in taking interviews of applicants (Park, 2012). In the social care setting, there are numerous important aspects that require careful attention or employers. Recruitment process being tedious and time-consuming may be handed over to the recruitment agencies so that they are left with more time to look into essential matters.

Reasons Why an Employer Would Choose to Use a Recruitment Agency

Use of recruitment agency may be useful in job hunting (Ogunyomi and Ojikutu, 2014). These agencies possess adequate knowledge of employers so they may provide information prior to interviews. At times, these agencies arrange for meetings with the organization, thereby providing tips to share information upon the organizational culture and history. The agencies sell the candidates at the early stages as well as negotiate on behalf once they succeed at the later stages of the interview.

Employers in the social care settings would choose for recruitment agency in order to gain suitable access to jobseekers, to occupy long and short term positions, to save resources in tedious process of attracting, selecting and recruiting, to conduct screening, testing and accessing expert knowledge such as present salary levels, market trends, advice on current legislation and immigration regulations, and also benefit packages. These organizational employers believe that managing such processes in-house may impart increased expense. They intend to spend more time on more important issues and jobs. Lot of time, resource and effort are required for any organization to dedicate in the hiring of most eligible employees (McGarrity, Bell and Barr, 1999). The recruitment agencies can easily eliminate this burden and involved time, cost, effort and burden from the human resource development and enable them to focus on vital businesses. Thus, it is their job to interview as well as screen potential applicants prior to present them to firms for considerations. This in fact reduces the sparing of time for organizations. As referred to here, the social care organizations may eliminate costs related to advertisements by adopting global advertising that these agencies are engaged in. It is natural that the agencies work with all potential applicants who are most probable to fit into the selection criteria for the desired position. Irrespective of the ongoing market situation, social care or any other organizations would prefer that the competitors remain completely unaware of their recruitment needs (Human Relations special issue call for papers: New approaches to employee voice and participation in organizations, 2007). Thus, working with reliable agencies can enable achieving higher level of confidentiality. Hiring the right people is extremely important for any organization, irrespective of the organizational size, business type or economic environment. Working in collaboration with recruitment agencies would allow the employers to hire the most suitable candidates for the vacant posts and at the same time removing any wastage of time to dedicate the time to more important job areas. Organizations need the right people to apply to the vacant jobs, but most of the time they lack adequate time to do so. Then they approach recruitment agencies to do all the work for them, so that the employers can spend more time in taking interviews of applicants. In the social care setting, there are numerous important aspects that require careful attention or employers.

Criteria an Employer Should Use to Select an Agency

Any organizational employer needs to understand that all recruitment agencies are equally effective. They must ensure that the agencies are member of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation. This is only recognized trade body in the industry for recruiting agencies. The employers need to check the feedback of people for the respective agency (Rowley, 2001). This would give them an idea about their effectiveness. From the perspective of employers, they generally do not prefer agencies who send them inappropriate applications of applicants. Once an agency does this with the CV, it becomes quite difficult for the employers to check those CVs as they have not agreed upon payment terms with the agency, and avoids confusion of agencies that try to invoice for money not agreed to pay by employers.

Before engaging any recruitment agency, the employers need to prepare specific requirements of the particular organization for the mentioned roles. This would state the type of individuals that are needed for the post, understand the very position of the roles in the organization, and also provide necessary information to the agency. An effective briefing would include technical specification, personal profile and organizational background (Harris, 2002).

It is very crucial to make the best selection of the recruitment agency because engaging the wrong ones would mean wastage of time, resources, and also it would be frustrating for the employers to hire employees on a constant basis. It is important for the employers to assess their suitability in association with roles involving recruitment. Some of the questions that are most relevant in this case are:

Does the recruitment agency specialise in the respective market of the organization?

Does it recruits in the specific discipline?

How long the agency has been working for?

Has they recruited for any of the competitors of the firm?

Does it take a consultative approach?

What values it adds? (Harbridge and Walsh, 2002)

Can the agency provide evidence of its previous success?

Is the agency reliable to maintain confidential information?

Through the study about the relationship it may be clearly stated that recruiters as well as employers require an effective way to coordinate together, no matter if it is merely by simple communication with each other or by using the process of online recruitment marketplace (Tumlin and Baldi, 2014). Both employer and recruitment agency need each other although they have varied goals; employers aim at reducing the overall time of hiring whereas agency aims at revenue, thereby both aiming at the common goal of placing the right applicant to the right job. The combined efforts of employers and agencies lead to lesser administration and effective target. If both the parties perform their duty effectively, it would only improve the relationship between them, enhance their reputation, increase service quality and also increase business gains.

Building a Good Relationship between HR Departments and Recruitment Agencies

Thus it is important to know what activities of the HR department would improve their relationship. Human resource department is responsible to identify and practice different ways of improving employee job satisfaction and also so that least number of employees exit the corporate door (Dainty, Raidén and Neale, 2009). There must be approaches to enhance the work life balance of the employees, such as improving career paths, introducing talent development programs, etc.

It is important on the part of the human resource department to incorporate effective planning structure so as to facilitate understanding of own responsibilities of both agency and employers. It is the duty of the HR department to plan out strategies of approaching recruitment agency and delegate responsibility to hire the most suitable candidates for any desired post.

Organizational human resource must keep the agencies well informed about organizational developments, recruitment needs, and every changing strategy. They must seek to help the agencies become advocate for respective business by providing them the required essential knowledge and information. On the other hand, it is important for the agencies to show some genuine interest within the employers, the business and the challenges that they face and this would enable a great deal to enhance the relationship (Community nurse recruitment target delayed by employers, 2012). Several organizations are said to value different forms of interactions as well as networking outside the practice. Normally employers often feel interested within the relevant new service developments as well as knowledge about marketplace that may bring about benefits to businesses. In order to enhance the relationship between the two parties it is important to encourage openness as well as honesty (Russam, 2005). These two elements are most crucial for any sort of relationship. There needs to be trust. Since both the parties aim at the common goal of placing the most effective candidates to the right post, this would bring about financial benefits to both.

On the part of the organizational human resource department, it is important to follow some strategies. These are –

Understanding each other to facilitate mutual respect

Taking a wider perspective of organizational benefits since this in turn benefits both the parties

Being realist and honest is important to enhance the cordial relationship

Being flexible provides increased opportunities to conduct the responsibilities effectively (Budd, Gollan and Wilkinson, 2010)

Maintaining quality is essential since this makes the task of both the parties easier

Monitoring performance gives opportunities to improve on the weaker portions

Providing all essential information to the agencies strengthens the relationship between the agency and the employer

The combined efforts of employers and agencies lead to lesser administration and effective target. If both the parties perform their duty effectively, it would only improve the relationship between them, enhance their reputation, increase service quality and also increase business gains (BRENČIČ and NORRIS, 2010).

It is important to note that the foremost step to enhance the relationship amidst employers and recruitment agencies is to understand each other’s objectives and areas of responsibilities. If these are well understood by both the parties it enables ignoring misunderstandings. The human resource department must provide adequate independence to the recruitment agencies to let them work in their own manner and style. Thus it is important to know what activities of the HR department would improve their relationship. Organizational human resource must keep the agencies well informed about organizational developments, recruitment needs, and every changing strategy. They must seek to help the agencies become advocate for respective business by providing them the required essential knowledge and information. On the other hand, it is important for the agencies to show some genuine interest within the employers, the business and the challenges that they face and this would enable a great deal to enhance the relationship.

References

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Dainty, A., Raidén, A. and Neale, R. (2009). Incorporating employee resourcing requirements into deployment decision making. Project Management Journal, 40(2), pp.7-18.

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Ogunyomi, P. and Ojikutu, R. (2014). Employee Resourcing and Performance of Small and Medium Enterprises in Lagos State, Nigeria. jebi, 1(1), p.16.

Park, R. (2012). Cognitive and affective approaches to employee participation: Integration of the two approaches. Journal of World Business, 47(3), pp.450-458.

Parry, E. and Kelliher, C. (2008). Voluntary sector responses to increased resourcing challenges.Employee Relations, 31(1), pp.9-24.

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