Author: Claire Beasley
Posted: April 2023
Onboarding is changing
In recent years, onboarding contingent workers has become much more complex. Legislation changes, combined with customers imposing more demanding contractual obligations, has contributed to a huge variation in compliance commitments. This has led to onboarding teams managing countless workflows with far greater requirements than they have done in the past, exposing businesses to more risk than ever before.
Onboarding teams manage countless workflows with much greater requirements than they have done in the past.
It is broadly acknowledged that if a process has been in place for some time, it should be examined to explore whether there is a more effective way of doing things and whether the process presents any additional risk since it was first designed. In a number of businesses, the contingent worker onboarding process would significantly benefit from attention and investment. Scrutinising these processes would not only help ensure candidates continue to be engaged compliantly and that all the hard work and effort involved in vetting a candidate has the desired outcome, but will also provide the opportunity to mitigate any potential wider business risk an outdated process presents.
The impact of getting onboarding wrong
It’s clear to see that whilst onboarding requirements have become more complex, processes and technology haven’t evolved at the same speed. The ability to maintain compliance, which naturally is expected 100% of the time, has become a lot more challenging. Therefore the risk of something going wrong is becoming more likely as compliance requirements advance beyond the ability of onboarding processes to keep up.
The worse-case scenario of something going wrong are the resulting financial penalties and reputational damage. This subsequently has an impact on sales and retention of key partnerships. But it’s not just the big headline risks…
Compliance professionals who have historically had to make do with managing onboarding on giant, colour-coded Excel spreadsheets, or adopting an area of a company platform not originally created for onboarding activity are demanding technology specifically designed to help them perform their roles better and add more value to their wider business.
At the London Recruitment Agency Expo 2023, it was interesting to see an increase in the number of existing technologies adapting their product to support part of the onboarding process, but with very little technology on the market dedicated specifically to this function, it is evident that onboarding processes are still being widely ignored. But will an onboarding module add-on be a compelling enough product for business leaders to want to spend money on onboarding teams and their tools?
In a recent Kingsbridge survey, 60% of contractors we asked told us the onboarding experience is key in deciding whether to work with, or re-engage with, a recruitment agency or end-client. So ensuring your onboarding experience is not just compliant but provides a premium user experience for both your employees and your contingent workers, might be the differentiator between talent walking through the door, or away from it.
60% of contractors said the onboarding experience is key in deciding whether to work with an agency or end-client.
Onboarding compliance risks on the increase
It goes without saying that the biggest priority for any team involved in the onboarding process is ensuring 100% compliance. It is critical that all workers do not start working until the vetting requirements have been finalised, whether that be complying with legal requirements, such as right to work, or contractual requirements requiring NDAs and policies to be read, agreed, and signed.
Yet, a shocking 45%* of contractors were not asked to provide their right-to-work documentation prior to starting their last assignment. Whether that is because processes were set up incorrectly, or whether businesses weren’t aware of their legal obligations, is unclear, but we know 100% compliance is not always happening.
How to mitigate risk when onboarding contractors
Here’s some key steps to enhance or revamp your onboarding process:
1. Provide regular training to everyone involved in onboarding
It may seem a very obvious statement to make, but how frequently are individuals receiving refreshers on legislation so they confidently identify non-compliance and know when to escalate issues? If it’s not at least every 6-12 months, it probably isn’t enough.
2. Ensure you are receiving up to date legal advice
So you can comply with your obligations and prepare adequately for new legislation or changes to existing legislation. There have been several updates to legislation over the past few years that we know not all businesses are keeping up with. For example, with the UK Government digitising right-to-work checks, it is still important that you satisfy yourself that the person who has gone through the vetting is the person who is turning up to work and that these checks are completed prior to the day the worker starts.
Alongside engaging with an experienced legal counsel in your sector, industry bodies such as REC (https://www.rec.uk.com/) and APSCo (https://www.apsco.org/) are useful sources of information regarding legislation applying to contingent workers and are great for creating awareness of potential changes to come.
3. Consult with your team
Individuals who work in onboarding provide the best source of knowledge for improving these processes, but they aren’t always represented during business transformations, or when procuring new technology.
Provide them with the opportunity to contribute so that the wider business can understand what challenges they deal with day-to-day and hear their suggestions for improvements so all views can be considered before changes are implemented.
4. Automate as many onboarding processes as possible
Automating a standard workflow that meets the majority of the vetting requirements is definitely a useful step to take. However it’s the nuances and the exceptions to the standard that create the biggest time and resource pressures, slow down the onboarding process and make it less effective. Invariably over time, these nuances and exceptions to the standard grow and become more difficult to track.
Excel spreadsheets are still being used by compliance professionals as their source of truth, not because they can’t move with the times, but because investment in technology hasn’t been prioritised for onboarding. But to manage the complexity of all legal and contractual onboarding requirements, using technology to automate as much as possible really is the only sensible way to manage complex, high-volume data. The limited choice of tech solutions in this space means it is important to consult with your team to really understand what they need, to ensure any technology implemented is going to offer genuine time and resource efficiencies, and enhance user experience.
5. Improve data protection processes to mitigate data breaches
Given the high volume of personal data accumulated during the onboarding process, it is surprising that so much of that data is still requested via email. 65%* of contractors still provide their personal information over email during the onboarding process.
The amount of unnecessary duplication together with copy and pasting from one document or platform to another, and the risk of manual data entry has remained a significant issue well beyond the major changes that needed to be implemented with the revision of The Data Protection Act in 2018.
Finding ways to avoid using email to exchange personal data should be a top priority, along with ensuring you hold data in a way that can easily respond to subject access and data erasure requests. A secure onboarding platform where you can hold all personal data can really help to address these issues.
6. Establish internal audit responsibilities separate from compliance
Set up reporting cadence to evidence checks have been completed and processes have been followed. Whilst sometimes both the onboarding and audit functions sit within one team it is important that there is a degree of separation to ensure onboarding standards are reviewed independently.
Taking steps to implement these changes can prevent compliance issues from occurring and with an obvious increase in interest for technology and process improvements within onboarding, it’s clear that companies are focussing on this area a lot more – so make sure you don’t get left behind.
*data from Kingsbridge Annual Survey 2023
Ask me anything
Please keep an eye open for our next article. In the meantime, let me know if you any questions or comments relating to the topics discussed above. I will contact you directly and/or answer them in future articles.
About the Author
Claire Beasley
Claire is an experienced compliance and service excellence professional, with over 20 years of experience in the recruitment industry working in operational roles with both a UK and global focus.
She has a comprehensive understanding of the challenges compliance and onboarding teams face, and enjoys finding ways to improve standards and optimise processes to address risk and enhance user experience.
Having led compliance teams, Claire is passionate about the contribution this function provides to businesses and believes there is a real opportunity with evolving technology to really enhance their value and the impact of the work they do.
