From the C-suite to trades roles the Armed Forces community offers a wealth of hard and soft skills sought after by organisations. In a labour market where 80% of UK businesses report difficulties in filling vacancies, businesses that fail to take advantage of this talent pool stand to miss out on the opportunity hidden within this community.
We find employers are not ignorant of the benefits of recruiting ex-forces, a population which increases by over 16,000 people each year. Over the past 5 years, we’ve seen organisations increasingly focus on ex-military talent acquisition, but often they lack the network or expertise to reach, engage and retain this group of workers.
Morson Forces are the Morson Group’s dedicated recruitment arm which has been laser-focused on securing skilled employment for ex-forces personnel for the past 20 years.
Armed Forces Day takes place on the last Saturday of June each year and is a great opportunity to celebrate the community. Our team supports individuals and their partners to transition from ex-forces to civilian life whilst opening doors to the potential of the service leaver community for businesses. Proud holders of the Ministry of Defence Gold Award in the Employer Recognition Scheme since 2017, we have more than 2,500 ex-Royal Navy, Army and RAF individuals working across projects in the UK and overseas.
Almost 13% of our candidate pool is designated as ex-forces.
So why do we invest so significantly in the ex-forces community and what makes this largely untapped talent pool key to helping our clients solve their talent challenges across multiple sectors?
“In the military, if you turn up on time, you’re actually 10 minutes late.” What skills do the ex-forces community offer?
Ex-forces personnel often possess skills that can set them apart from their peers. Soft skills such as organisation, timekeeping and discipline are hard-coded by military experience and culture. In addition, almost all have NVQ or degree accreditations and often have practical experience in subjects like engineering, easily transferrable for similar civilian roles.
We all know that ‘you don’t have to be a pilot to fly in the RAF’, but it goes much further as Jon Moon, veteran, Contracts Manager and Morson Forces team member explains:
“The Royal Navy doesn’t just sail ships, the Army doesn’t just fire weapons and the RAF doesn’t just fly planes. They can be surgeons, dentists, cartographers, HR and payroll experts, logisticians, drivers, vehicle mechanics, aircraft engineers, analysts, security, IT, cyberspace communications, radar, telecoms, chefs, aircrew, firefighters, the list goes on…
Leadership, working in safety-critical environments, following instructions (verbal and written) in addition to multi-skilled, professional accreditation and qualifications mean that many forces individuals are extremely attractive candidates. Punctual, with a strong work ethic they can turn their hands to any task.“
JON MOON, MORSON FORCES
Most candidates have a minimum of an NVQ level 3 trade qualifications and many with additional professional and personal trade associated with MSc. BSc, MBA and Charter Status.
Many service leavers also come with learning credits which can be used to a future employer’s benefit. The schemes entitle eligible personnel to receive financial assistance towards their learning, promoting life-long development that enables higher level learning of a nationally recognised qualification at Level 3 or above with an approved provider. Information for serving personnel who are looking to claim this can be found here.
With job-ready service people exiting the military each year alongside those aware they will leave within the next 1-3 years, organisations can easily align veteran engagement with their short, medium and long-term talent acquisition strategies.
Barriers that hinder recruiting ex-forces often appear at the first stages of the recruitment process...
Many armed forces have limited knowledge of the working world outside the military bubble. Some ex-services personnel won’t have written a CV or experienced an interview since they joined the armed forces at the age of 16. And challenges such as translating some of the transferable skills they’ve learnt in the armed forces into something that would appeal to an employer are not to be underestimated. Employers must be aware of these challenges if they are to unleash the potential of this community.
The role of our Morson Forces Ambassador, Corporal Andy Reid MBE, is to help veterans overcome these barriers, supporting them to translate their military skills and experience into job-ready ‘civvy’ language.
Army veteran and triple amputee, having been injured by an IED while on a tour of Afghanistan in 2009, Andy is a vital link between service leavers, our recruitment teams, and clients, working together to identify and capitalise on employment/hiring opportunities.
A key part of Andy and the wider Morson Forces team’s community outreach is events. Each year, the Career Transition Partnership (CTP) and the British Forces Resettlement Services (BFRS) run dozens of events across the country aimed at current and future service leavers. Each event enables networking between potential candidates and employers. For businesses, it’s the perfect opportunity to engage with forces talent and register CVs for future opportunities. Our Morson Forces team attend these events regularly, often in partnership with our clients, helping introduce them to the forces talent pool. With a recruitment team composed of veterans, we provide our clients with unique insight into the ex-forces community and wider talent landscape.
Watch Pat McMullan, Morson Forces Account Manager, at the CTP in Salford:
It’s not just about engagement, it’s about retention. How can employers support recruiting ex-forces personnel and foster a forces-friendly culture?
For veterans to thrive in their new civilian roles, employers must focus on creating an environment of ongoing support and understanding. Our clients who experience the best rates of retention are those who cultivate an internal forces community or support network as well as ongoing investment from a training and development perspective.
Transitioning from military to civilian life is often a significant adjustment. To support, employers could offer:
Tailored support programs, such as mentoring initiatives and skills development workshops.
Create an internal ex-forces group led by ex-forces candidates with networking opportunities – see Amazon, Barclays, and DHL.
Sign the Armed Forces Covenant. With our Gold Award advocacy, we are helping some of our new clients to undertake this.
Use awareness days such as Armed Forces Day to educate civilian workers and celebrate military culture, challenges and experiences – training sessions, guest speakers, or internal communications are all great activations.
By demonstrating a commitment to hiring and supporting veterans through small but significant activities employers can send a powerful message to veterans that their organisation values the skills and experiences of ex-military candidates.
What does the signing of the Armed Forces Covenant demonstrate?
Last month, retailer John Lewis became the 10,000th signatory of the Armed Forces Covenant. Signing the Armed Forces Covenant is a clear way for employers to show their commitment to helping service leavers. The Armed Forces Covenant is a promise by the nation ensuring that those who serve or who have served in the armed forces, and their families, are treated fairly.
Morson Forces have been a proud holder of the Ministry of Defence Gold Award, the highest attainable level for signatories to the covenant, since 2017. We’ve also helped several of our clients on their journey through bronze and silver.
Clients we have helped on their Armed Forces Covenant journey whilst recruiting ex-forces include St. Modwen, Brakes, Marshall and Manchester United.
“Through Morson Forces, we’ve made a commitment to ensuring that once a service leaver begins a new role – either as a Morson employee, permanent staff or contractor with one of our clients – they have access to the support they require through our expert HR and care support teams.
There is nothing else like Morson Forces on the market, which not only makes us best placed to welcome ex-military people into our Group, but ensures we are able to gain all the necessary knowledge and insight required to give these individuals the best chance at starting the next chapter of their lives.“
PAT MCMULLAN, MORSON FORCES
We’re dedicated to supporting organisations as they explore recruiting ex-forces individuals. Whether you’re looking to fill niche roles in your business, engage the ex-forces community or need guidance with the Armed Forces Covenant, we have you covered.
Raconteur believe that outsourcing is set to boom after large layoffs at companies like Google and Meta. Downsizing is an attractive prospect during times of economic uncertainty, but it also leaves companies with resource gaps. Outsourcing companies will be eager to fill the gaps and will likely present attractive SLAs (service level agreements) and KPIs (key performance indicators) when they vie for new contracts. We believe businesses need to look beyond these promises to the culture and values of the partners they choose to work with.
After all, a company’s values and culture will be reflected in the team they put together and the candidates they source. The resulting conflicting cultures not only spark dissatisfaction on a personal level but may lead to business-critical miscommunications, project delays and cost inflation.
Richard Skellett, founder of the Globalution Group of consultancies:
“A poor culture fit can lead to misunderstanding and conflict which delay project delivery and have a negative impact on the quality of work. So it’s important that everyone is on the same page”
At Morson we take a collaborative approach, getting to know your business needs, culture and values. We provide solutions that are tailored to our clients. Our MSP and RPO solutions integrate with your internal talent strategies. By listening and understanding we can implement solutions which enable you to achieve your ambitions. We use this two-way dialogue as the foundation of all new outsourced solutions to set our team as well as yours up for success.
“A successful relationship starts by setting up an equal partnership from the off. Describing what success looks like to your business and the challenges preventing your existing team from being able to achieve them requires an honest, inward look at your organisation.
The more data and real examples you can give the provider, the better equipped they will be to share how their approach will transform your business for the better.”
Rowena Cooper, Head of Talent and Resourcing at St. Modwen
Managed Service Provision
Our MSP builds agile contingent workforces by managing the entire talent cycle. Implementing responsive models which scale to your business ambitions. More than that, together we’ll have a bird’s eye view of your talent, allowing us to manage spending, track trends, build diverse teams, and forecast for the future. It’s a collaboration that fuses your ambitions, objectives and intelligence with our talent expertise and market knowledge.
Over a three-year contract with UK Power Networks we have provided a strategic MSP that has delivered:
bespoke training for hiring managers
diversity capture surveys
candidate research
dual-branded candidate attraction campaigns and more.
“Through our robust procurement process we were able select a partner that understands our values and will drive initiatives that would create a thriving future.”
RP01, Morson’s recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) offer, gets to know your business and your people. We integrate with your internal talent strategies, to manage and support your recruitment processes and care for your brand. Our talent and optimisation teams seamlessly impart our expertise into organisations. They help recruit niche skills, create diverse, engaged candidate pipelines, control supply chain quality and reduce costs. We become one with your organisation, curating talent solutions that understand the nuances of your business, flex with your requirements and truly succeed for you.
While acting as RPO partner to Manchester United, we’ve recruited physios, software programmers, coaches, partnership leads, social media specialists, goalkeeping scouts, football analysts, fundraising executives and even groundsmen.
We’ve been focused as a team to build relationships and centralise the talent function within the club, all whilst demonstrating our expertise and credentials by delivering a consistently excellent service that helped engage those within the club who didn’t necessarily understand the role of our partnership at the outset. RPO1 live and breathe the club’s brand and are our colleagues.
Sarah McGuire, head of talent development and resourcing at Manchester United
HR Outsource
An outsourced HR solution can streamline operations, reduce costs, ensure compliance and provide real business value. We operate an Ulrich model, meaning that our CIPD accredited HR professionals are subject matter experts. So, we have a precise understanding of employee relations, talent management, wellbeing, and change management. Together, our diverse team combines this expertise to offer a one stop shop for businesses seeking expert HR support.
St Modwen is a long-term client of Morson who had previously experienced poorly managed outsourced HR. Our commitment to fully understanding their needs reassured them that Morson was the right partner for them.
“Don’t underestimate the importance of the relationship. Morson is an extension of our team, and it’s felt like that since the very first interaction.”
Becky Cund, head of HR operations & sustainable people projects at St. Modwen
With truly embedded expert teams, solutions, and experiences, we listen, collaborate, engage, shape and solve, enabling you to hire, transform and captivate. Our approach is consultative and insight-driven. We are here to help you to make the right decisions, deliver strategic impact and care for your brand.
Morson Sales Director, Sam Menelaou believes:
“It’s not rocket science, it’s simple behavioural psychology; people respond to people. From our years of experience in the talent industry, we understand that authenticity, recommendation, and rapport is the biggest driver of consumer behaviour. And in the current market, it is more important than ever that outsourced partners mirror their client’s behaviours and culture to ensure they secure the best talent, by elevating, living, and promoting their brand and values.
Gone are the days of cryptic agency job adverts, smoke-and-mirrors relationships and static KPIs. For example, in the MSP world, our clients are increasingly keen for us to act as an extension of their organisation, becoming one with their brand, and moving more towards an RPO-style relationship.
We’re so successful because this way of working has always been intrinsic to the Morson DNA.”
If you would like to find out which of our outsource solutions is right for you, or have any questions about the Morson approach to recruitment, get in touch with Sam at Sam.Menelaou@morson.com
Larissa Vingilis-Jaremko is the Founder & President of the Canadian Association for Girls in Science (CAGIS), Canada’s largest and longest-running STEM club for girls, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming youth aged 7-16. With virtual programming and local clubs that visit labs, workshops, and field sites to meet mentors and do fun, hands-on activities, their aim is to inspire the next generation of girls in STEM in Canada.
With a natural curiosity from a young age and an interest in science and engineering that had been carefully nurtured and encouraged by her parents, Larissa initially had the idea for CAGIS at just nine years old and knew that she wanted to pursue a career in STEM.
For PathFinders, we spoke to her about her career journey, her goals with CAGIS and much more.
Tell us about your early years, when did your interest in STEM first appear?
When I was younger, I was kind of interested in everything. I was a very curious kid. I just wanted to discover and explore and learn. I always had a lot of questions and I discovered, thanks to my parents, that science was a great way to answer questions. When I had these millions of questions, as most kids do, my parents would help me through the scientific method.
My mom is a scientist, she currently works as a professor at Western University and her area of expertise is adolescent at-risk behaviour. My dad was a mechanical engineer and a pilot. So, I got very different types of STEM training from both. On my dad’s side, it was a lot of aviation and building and mechanical stuff. And on my mom’s side very much the research methods, the scientific method. It was a nice balance from them.
We would build things, we would do research. You know, the normally the step one is to start off by reading books and seeing ‘what do we know about this topic?’ But then we would also do experiments where we bring leaves and dirt home. I would prick my finger and look at blood under my microscope. I would explore a lot and science and engineering and tech were just great ways of fulfilling that curiosity I had.
How was school for you? Did you know what you wanted to be from a young age?
I wouldn’t say that I knew exactly what I wanted to be. I was interested in so many different things. I liked science and engineering, but I also love to dance. I wanted to be an astronaut and a lawyer and a professional dancer. I wanted to be all of the things! But STEM was part of that.
In high school I knew I needed to take the science courses, especially with parents who were in STEM. I did just kind of a general science and I ended up focusing on psychology, biology and French as a minor.
Through that, I was debating what path I wanted to take. I ended up in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour. I was really interested in vision science from a cognitive perspective, how the brain processes visual information and how that is affected by visual experience and different typical versus atypical visual experience in development.
I ended up doing my PhD in that. I did some post-doc work and after a few years of post, I was running my organisation, the Canadian Association for Girls in Science, on the side until I saw a grant that was a really good fit, so I applied for it. We were successful and then that actually allowed me to leave academia, which was a hard decision because I love academia. But we have been successful with continuing to get funding so far and we now have a small team of staff in addition to hundreds of volunteers across the country.
What negative stereotypes did you see in school that inspired you to help girls in STEM in Canada?
As I mentioned, I loved science and engineering as a kid because I got to do it in a very hands-on way at home. When I was in school, I saw that a lot of the kids, particularly the girls in my classes, had very different perceptions. They had stereotypes. The typical scientist stereotype, an old white man with wild hair glasses, a lab coat. The perceptions were also that people in STEM were kind of nerdy. They like to stay in their lab. They didn’t socialise, they didn’t have any other interests. These were negative perceptions that were turning a lot of the girls off the subject entirely. For many of them, it was their least favourite subject.
At school, it was very book-learning-related environment. It was a way of exploring it that was different from what I found fun at home, it was different to the way my parents were facilitating that interest in me, so I knew that there was a stereotype that I wanted to break. For example, one day when I was in Grade 4, my teacher had said to our class, “I need a volunteer to set up this experiment really quickly from this science kit. Can I have a volunteer?” Now I have the science kit at home. I knew I could do it really quickly, so I raised my hand and she said “No, Larissa. I need a boy to do this.”
So I started to invite the colleagues of my parents into my classroom, women in science and engineering to be role models and to do some fun, hands-on activities with us so that the other girls in my class could see that the stereotypes aren’t true and STEM can be really fun.
When did you first get the idea to form CAGIS, and why?
My mum was actually involved in the Canadian Coalition of Women in Engineering, Science, Trades and Technology (CCWEST) when I was young, back in 1992. Sometimes I was bought along to it when it was a conference. Instead of pushing me as a kid into the corner, they brought me up to the board table and asked me questions like, ‘what are things like for you as a girl in STEM in Canada?’ and ‘What do you think needs to change. what are things like in your classroom?’.
And so one day I stood up at one of these meetings when I was nine and said I’m going to start an organisation for girls. This is what I plan to do, and they were all really supportive. That gave me the part of the inspiration and the confidence to start. I think because I saw all of these other women who were doing these great things and who were trying to fix the problem.
What is CAGIS and what does it do?
CAGIS is a STEM club for girls and gender diverse youth. It has two main programmes. One of the programmes is our local clubs, or chapters, which we have all across the country. Every month we go on a mini adventure to a different STEM location. These adventures are around 2 hours in length and we get to do fun things like sample fish in a pond. We catching the fish and colleting data with the scientist or we might go to a garage and work with the mechanic and learn how to tune up cars. We’re always going to these really cool locations to do exciting STEM activities to really encourage girls in STEM in Canada.
Then there are our virtual programmes. These happen every week during the school year. There are two one-hour sessions, one for kids, one for teens. Again, we make sure that there are role models present who are STEM experts learning the activities. They’re very hands on, so we might be making ice cream with a food engineer or growing crystals with a chemist. Again, most of the sessions are hands on because that’s the main component that we want to make sure we’re incorporating.
Organisations like CAGIS are doing a lot to balance out the gender divide and encourage girls in STEM in Canada. How do you think the perception of STEM subjects has changed since you were young?
I wish it had changed more. Unfortunately, we’re still seeing the same stereotypes in full force. I think there have been some shifts because one of the main places we get these stereotypes is from the media and from society at large. In the media, we are seeing more women and gender diverse people represented in STEM. So that’s a great step.
There is a task where scientists ask kids to ‘draw a scientist’. And then they rate the drawings based on the stereotypes that are present. We’ve have found that the stereotypes present have reduced over time and the percentage of women scientists that are being drawn by kids has increased. In fact, among 5 to 6-year-olds, they’re drawing equal numbers of male and female scientists, so that’s a great step. But we’re also seeing that as kids get older, by the time they’re 13 or 14, the number of male scientists being drawn are outnumbered 4 to 1. And so that’s kind of an important thing for us to know and that’s why developmental research is so important to make sure that we’re looking across ages.
What would you say the biggest challenges specifically in Canada at the moment with regards to attracting girls into STEM?
If we think of gender equity in STEM as a pipeline, it starts with youth. Making sure that those educational barriers are not present and that we are able to support youth in their education up to post-secondary and beyond. But it continues once we’re looking at the STEM workforce. Making sure that the workforce and the companies and employers are creating equitable spaces for their employees. And then the third component is advancement. We know that women and gender diverse people hit what we sometimes refer to as a glass ceiling. They’re not advancing in their careers at the same rate as men are. And we know that that this is impacted by bias.
There was a study that was done where University professors were given a job application for a lab manager, and they changed the name on the job application from Jane to John and had the university professors rate the job applications with the two names based on which one was more qualified, who was more hireable, etcetera. They found that when the name was a male name that those applications were rated as more qualified, assigned to higher starting salary, assigned more mentorship. They were the same application. And so that’s an example of how this bias this would be an example of implicit bias, how it affects trajectory of youth and adults within STEM.
What are the future plans for CAGIS?
With our local clubs, there continues to be a lot of interest across the country, both from places where we currently have local clubs or chapters and places where we don’t. Our plans are to be able to expand to make sure that we’re meeting that demand and that need and to start local clubs in regions where there’s interest where we don’t currently have them. As far as our virtual programming goes, we want to make sure as many people know about it as possible so that they can join in. We have also a fun new portion of our website that will be launched soon which will involve fun hands-on activities, blog posts written by youth, videos, a more interactive, ongoing way that you can participate in STEM.
If they don’t, if they aren’t able to log on at the right time of our virtual sessions or in person, so it’s just kind of an additional enrichment of our programming.
Morson is committed to helping attract more girls in STEM in Canada. We’re partnering with the Canadian Association for Girls in Science to support their youth programmes.
Are you passionate about building diverse STEM futures? Adept at mentorship with a flair for sharing your skills and knowledge with young people? You might be a candidate! Click here to find out more
Chloe Hughes is a Stress Engineer at Morson Projects. Having a long-standing enthusiasm for aviation nurtured by a love of sci-fi, Chloe has trodden an unconventional path to lead her to working in aerospace. For PathFinders, we spoke to her about her journey and the lessons she’s learned along the way.
When I was at school, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I wasn’t really interested in many things. I knew I liked maths, and I loved problem-solving, so that was something that I really wanted to get into. I was lucky enough to come from a family of engineers, so I knew what an engineer was. However, I didn’t get much influence from women in engineering, so I didn’t really feel that it was something that I wanted to do at the time.
I left school at 16 and went to college. I decided to do a BTEC in electronic engineering and I loved that. I didn’t get into university at that point, so I worked in a bank for six months, hated it, and went back to college, to do a HNC in electronic engineering.
I’m from the Isle of Man, so there’s not much going on in terms of engineering and design and things like that. I knew that I had to try and get off the island to try and broaden my career choices. I went to university in London and did electronic engineering again, it was just kind of a continuation.
Even though I was very interested in aerospace, I just kind of had to keep going with what I already had. Well, that’s what I thought, because I didn’t really have anyone to tell me what I could do and what I couldn’t do. I finished my degree. I couldn’t really find a job in London. There wasn’t much going on engineering-wise there, so I decided to study a masters in Sweden in robotics.
That was an amazing thing to do. If there’s an opportunity for you to go abroad and study, definitely do it because it just opens your mind. It’s amazing. I met so many amazing people. I really enjoyed robotics. I think it was really fun. It’s the future. There’s just so many different things, like with AI and the hardware, software like everything.
One of the modules I took in Sweden was A.I. Just seeing and understanding that A.I. is just maths, it’s weird. You can really boil down decision-making to just probability, and it’s just amazing that you can just take that little bit of maths and then put that into an algorithm, into a software program, write a script about it and you have something intelligent, basically, and making decisions.
Then, I did an Erasmus to Lisbon, Portugal, to do my master’s thesis there in human-robot interaction, which was very interesting. After that came back to London, I was there still wasn’t as many jobs as I wanted there. I did struggle and then the pandemic hit. I was still in hospitality at the time, so I was put on furlough at that point.
I took it to myself to be like, “what do I actually want to do?” And that was aerospace engineering. I always wanted to do that, and I didn’t realise that I could. So that’s when I decided, let’s go back to university and do my master’s in aerospace.
I’ve always been into sci fi. It’s one of my favourite things. Watching different things when I was younger, like Red Dwarf, being on a ship. It’s just always been really cool to me! Things that can fly, like, how can things fly? It seems so abstract, but it’s real. Even if you get something up in the air, how is it going to stay there?
I met Maria Williamson. She was my mentor at the University of Salford on the Go Beyond scheme. She helped me with my interview skills as I’m rubbish at them and I think she saw some passion in me and thought it would be great to get me on the team at Morson Projects. So that’s how I got into submarines and then getting into aerospace was more about the networking at Morson Projects.
I’m currently a stress engineer and I do a lot of analysis on different structures to be able to see if the forces and pressures that are exerted on an airplane, they’ll be able to withstand that, so it won’t fail in any way. I just it’s amazing like to see how much work goes into it, putting my name on that as well, it’s amazing.
Morson Projects has recently embarked on a STEM ambassador scheme, where engineers across the organisation are trained how to engage young people in local schools in STEM activities. Chloe is one such ambassador:
I’ve chosen to be a STEM ambassador because I feel that I didn’t really have anyone there outside of my family to actually tell me the different things that engineers can do. I didn’t really like school that much and I was much shyer when I was younger. Having someone take notice of me and say like, you know what? You can do something like this, I think would really like it would that would have been amazing to see a bit more of that I would love to be able to just inspire someone outside of like their family or the norms that they see every day. And especially young girls or people that don’t know what they want to do in their lives, because it is such a fun thing and there’s so many different things you can do.
It’s not just aerospace or power or submarines. You could do product design. Everything is engineered. It’s amazing for people with all different backgrounds, different diversities and different ideas of how things can be made… it’s just the best thing in engineering!
Another Morson Group engineer who has taken an unconventional path into the industry is James Baillie. He started off as a professional footballer, before leaning on his creative flair at school with design software to become a CAD technician with Waldeck. Hear his story here
IR35 compliance (Off-Payroll Working Legislation) remains an issue for many businesses. It can be a long, drawn-out process and some organisations have been in discussion with HMRC for several years. While the rules have not changed, we’ve noticed that HMRC has refreshed its approach to evaluating compliance in some key cases.
HMRC’s fresh approach to IR35 compliance.
HMRC are now asking for more details from IR35 clients and have committed to 2,500 more compliance staff in 2022-2023 which will almost certainly include off-payroll compliance resource, so HMRC is refocusing its efforts across the board. The next level questions focus on how robust IR35 compliance processes are and they have started taking sample Status Determination Statements (SDSs) for scrutiny.
The tax office has also incorporated IR35 compliance into its Business Risk Review+ (BRR+) process. Organisations subject to a BRR+ need to complete HMRC’s ‘Off-payroll Working and Employment Status & Intermediaries Questions’ document. The questionnaire aims to discover the scale of the contingent population, the use of Personal Service Companies (PSCs) and the IR35 compliance processes in place. These businesses also need to identify supply chain partners such as recruitment or consultancy firms.
The track record of some of the key public sector cases showcases HMRC’s harsh stance on non-compliance.
Contracted Out Services – a specific focus
HMRC is also asking hiring organisations to provide the number and names of Consultancies, Main Contractors and other contracted-out services they are using. A fully contracted-out service will often involve the provision of goods and materials, as well as labour and will usually have an opportunity for profit, beyond taking a percentage of the worker’s fee’
Ultimately, it is the hiring organisations who are responsible for accurately assessing the service provision between them and their suppliers. If no assessment is made or an incorrect assessment made due to a lack of reasonable care, the result would be non-compliance with the legislation and the business could be fined. Businesses must be familiar with the legislation to ensure appropriate processes are in place when engaging suppliers.
Compliance activities should include a robust assessment and communication that both parties agree to the outcome of the assessment. Businesses that can’t prove that their processes are robust risk being fined by HMRC.
The cost of non-compliance in the public sector
£9.2M – HS2
£87.9M – Department of Work and Pensions
£29.5M – Home Office
£12.5M – Ministry of Justice
Most of these fines result from a lack of knowledge and a lack of demonstrable compliance. However, IR35 compliance can be achieved and is being achieved by many organisations that have taken a robust approach to managing IR35 risks.
The cost of compliance will certainly be less than that of non-compliance.
Whether your contractor workforce is vast or tiny, we want to help clients avoid the potential mistakes that might be incurred by business’ individual practices, and offer them total confidence that despite IR35, there won’t be any hurdles in accessing and utilising contingent labour.
If you are concerned about your IR35 systems or processes we’re on hand to help. Get in touch with James Millward, head of integrated services for more information james.millward@morson.com
