The Times sent their reporter to spend seven working days at Amazon’s warehouse after signing up with a large employment agency.  She was told that the hourly rate for a day shift was £6.30, 57p more than the minimum wage. She worked on an evening shift until midnight, earning £6.80 an hour, but was told that she would have to pay £8.50 a day to use a communal bus laid on by the recruitment firm unless she could arrange her own travel to Amazon’s warehouse.

The Times quoted Allan Lyall, vice president of EU operations for Amazon:

“During 2008, we have taken on over 4,000 temporary fulfilment centre associates in the UK and are benefiting from the lowest level of employees leaving the company that we have experienced over all our 11 Christmases. We hope that a good number of these will go on to become permanent members of the Amazon.co.uk team as well.”

FPS Umbrella salutes Britain’s temporary workers who pull out the stops and put up with a lot over the festive season.  What would our economy do without them?

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It goes on to say that offshore umbrellas based overseas – including the Isle of Man – have offered contractors up to 85 per cent of their income by operating from locations outside the UK tax system. However, the Finance Act 2008 introduced measures to prevent tax avoidance through misuse of double taxation treaties for income arising on or after 12 March 2008.

However, this article actually contains a significant discrepancy and that is that Danbro mention that offshore umbrella companies are offering individuals 85% of their income. By definition an umbrella company would always pay employees under full UK PAYE and NI deductions. It would therefore be impossible to pay anyone 85% of their income whether the umbrella company is in the UK or offshore. What Danbro are mentioning here is most definitely not an umbrella company!

Childcare Vouchers are simple to set up and use. Here is a list of some of the benefits:

• They are exempt from tax and National Insurance contributions – a hugely important tax concession for working parents.
• Savings can be made by both parents.
• Working parents can each save up to £1196 per year via reduced tax and NI.
• The vouchers are HMRC and government approved.
• Can be used to pay for all approved or registered childcare for children ages 0-16 years old, from nursery fees for the little ones to activity holidays for the teenagers.
• Tax free benefit voucher value £55 per week/£243 a month
• Busy Bees vouchers provide discounts on Busybees nursery places.
• Since the vouchers were launched a number of FPS Members have signed up for this and seen the benefits immediately.

Ben: I’m currently the CEO & Co-Founder of Standout Jobs, which started in 2007 and launched at the end of January 2008. Prior to that I was the co-founder of another web software company, which I had started in 1996. As a software entrepreneur I’ve touched on every aspect of starting and running a business - financing, operations, recruiting, sales, marketing, product development, customer service, etc. I enjoy all of them, although I get especially excited about product development and customer service. These are areas that I’ve focused on in my career as an entrepreneur.

I have a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from McGill University - and started my first company (1996) while I was still in school finishing the degree.

I’m all neck-deep in the world of social media, blogging and social media marketing. I write a blog on startups and business called Instigator Blog, and have done consulting work for numerous small and large companies on social media strategy.

On a personal note, I’m the father of two young boys (3 and a half and 14 months), and I’ve been happily married for 7 years. I live in Montreal, Canada.

Jason: How do you think career sites have evolved over the past 3-5 years?

Ben: From my own perspective, as the owner of a small company (prior to Standout Jobs) I don’t think career sites were even on my radar. Certainly they existed, but I think they looked / acted much the same way as they do now; they’re static, uninspiring and provide a very poor candidate experience.

Over 5+ years we’ve certainly seen significant evolution of corporate websites. They’re getting better designed, faster, and more streamlined. They’re targeting prospects better, and many companies do much deeper analytical research into visitors’ behavior. But little of that has translated effectively to career sites, at least for smaller and medium-sized businesses.

Jason: What are some of the biggest challenges with career sites today from your perspective?

Ben: I’ve mentioned some of them above - but I think the crux of the issue is that HR isn’t given the real estate or flexibility to do what it needs to on its career website to attract the right audience and keep them engaged. Corporate sites are dominated by Marketing/Sales - which is understandable; HR’s biggest challenge is being able to translate the Marketing/Sales-driven approach to corporate websites to their career websites. And, I would encourage companies (of all sizes) to give more prominent real estate on corporate sites to recruiting. Every single website should have a “WE ARE HIRING” sign right on the home page, because it works.

Beyond the “who rules the corporate website” situation, I think the next biggest issue is the quality of career sites to provide a great experience to job seekers, interaction and engagement. Currently, most career sites allow you to apply and do nothing else. But you can be sure there’s plenty of people who are “window shopping”, interested in engaging with the company but not ready to apply. Many of those people aren’t being supported effectively.

Jason: With all of the changes in technology, why do you think there have been few improvements in the overall engagement and experience for candidates?

Ben: There’s a lot of technology out there. There are even more buzzwords. That in and of itself is a big part of the problem. I’d say the next issue is that none of the technology, or solutions out there to-date are recruiting-centric. Yes, you can use an existing platform or existing technology to put something together and start to provide candidates with a better experience, but there’s a learning curve, you need to potentially get I.T. involved, and it’s downright overwhelming.

I think we’re starting to see newer technology that leverages some of the newer principles of how to use the Web (blogging, social networking, social media, etc.) targeted to HR, and if that’s done successfully, with easy-to-use tools that don’t require huge cost or time investments on the part of companies, things will change.

Jason: What do you see as the top 2-3 areas of improvement with online recruiting?

Ben: The overarching issue with online recruiting is that it’s not built around active communication between employers and candidates (and prospective candidates). Online recruiting isn’t built to representative how people interact. It’s evolved into a much more transactional model, which has its merits, and you can understand in the early days of the Web why things went in that direction. But times have changed online, and they’ll continue to change at a very quick pace; online recruiting hasn’t caught up, and while I don’t go starry eyed into the night with dreams of “social networking for jobs” or assuming that every Web 2.0 concept is perfectly suited for recruiting, the fact is that online recruiting has to become more conversational and open, and less process-driven.

Jason: When did V1 launch? What upcoming changes are being made with the V2 Standout Jobs product? When will they be available?

Ben: We launched the product at the end of January, 2008. Since that time we’ve made numerous improvements - iteratively adding features, fixing others - and generally responding to our clients’ needs and following our product roadmap. As for V2, who said anything about V2? *chuckle*

What we’ve built to-date is a good platform for allowing HR to quickly and easily create a branded career site. We’ve started opening the doors for more communication of a company’s culture, and more interaction between companies and people. There’s definitely room for more, ultimately to fulfill on the goals of helping company’s representative themselves more effectively and communicate more actively with candidates (prospective or already in the pipeline.) I can say this - we move very quickly - it’s what makes a startup so exciting, the ability to iterate quickly, launch new things fast, test the market and get feedback. I can’t promise dates for anything new, but you can expect lots of news in the next few months.

The agreement means equal rights apply to temps after working for an organisation for 12 weeks. This includes the same pay, holidays (on a pro-rata basis), overtime and breaks as recruited employees.
The agreement has been reached after six years of talks at an EU level and negotiation between bodies such as the TUC, CBI and the UK government. A sticking point was after how much time a temp should get the same rights – even one day was in the melting pot. The compromise struck at 12 weeks is fair, say many.
Supporters of the agreement say it’s a good deal and puts an end to exploitation of a sizeable work force – 1.3m are employed in temp jobs every week – that offer the flexilibity vital to a dynamic economy. It means agency staff who have worked for extensive periods for a company will now receive equal treatment.
Those in favour say this is the right balance between protection and flexilibity.
However, critics say a key to the success of the UK economy is the flexibility of the labour market in which agency staff have a key role – and that is particularly important given today’s challenging market conditions. The agreement reduces employers’ choice, they say, and will lead to fewer opportunities for agency workers. I39 per cent of employers say the directive will have an impact and 68 per cent say they will recruit fewer agency staff, according to a Labour Market Outlook report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
The agreement includes a clause forbidding companies from firing a temp worker just before the three-month time is reached, and hiring them immediately afterwards, so businesses can’t get around it that way. There are other ways around the legislation, such as engaging agency workers on a project basis or treating all temps as trainees.