1. Edwina Brewster HR Consulting

2. To recruit or not to recruit?
Edwina Brewster, MCIPD

3. To recruit or not to recruit?
The B word!
What are your options now?
How might that change?
Top tips for making your first (or your next) hire!

4. The B word! No-one really knows what’s going to happen
Business’ and employees need to be agile
The only guarantee is that there is no guarantee!
For Brexit to happen on 29th March 19, a final deal needs to be agreed. Under the original plan this was supposed to have been agreed by October. EU officials acknowledge this might now be delayed until December.
Todays news indicates the Brussels are preparing to climb down and are set to agree that the UK can stay in the single market for trade without having to accept free movement.
We can’t plan if we don’t know our options so we need to be agile (able to respond quickly) and that includes your employees. I am recommending to my clients that they start to talk to current employees now about their plans, especially if they have EU nationals in the workforce and they don’t want them to leave. At the moment we expect the new ‘right to settle’ programme to go live in October. Employers might need to consider helping their EU employees to apply if they want to keep them.
Explain the ‘right to settle’ programme if some aren’t aware of it!
If the current plan remains unchanged from July 2021 EU citizens will need to demonstrate their ‘right to settle’ in the UK. From July 21 it will become more difficult to attract talent, non UK nationals not already working in the UK will need some form of work permit and its likely that this will need to be in place before they enter the country.

5. What are your options now? And how might this change?
EU nationals can be employed freely until December 2020
Tier 2 sponsorship for non EU nationals
The gig economy!
Explain why its not a good idea to hire EU nationals without right to settle after December 2020 even though work permits for EU nationals will not be in place until July 21.
We expect the current Tier 2 sponsorship licence to be extended to EU nationals after July 21 but this is still to be confirmed by the home office
The best option for small businesses is to exploit the gig economy to its limit! Outsource if you can, use freelancers if you can, think about restructuring the resources you already have access to so that you can ring fence the work that is critical to business continuity. The gig economy will continue to grow, ignore it at your peril, there are tens of thousands of self employed people out there that may be able to help you grow your business. Just remember they are not employees, don’t treat them as employees. Treat them as suppliers and make sure you have T’s & C’s in place.

6. Top tips for making your first (or your next)hire!
Why do you need the resource? Where?
How will they add value to the bottom line?
How will you measure success?
Gig your theory!
I always challenge my clients when they say to me Edwina I think we need to recruit a new member of staff. Because in my experience (unless that decision was part of a carefully planned strategy) this is always a knee jerk response to the situation.
My stock response is, show me how this post is going to add value to the business? What skills, knowledge and experience do they need to be able to do this? Why? Are you sure? Do we have those skills in the business now? Can we use that person who meets our criteria and already knows our business to fill this post and re-design their vacant post to be add even more value to the business.
Its always about the bottom line, so how will this new post add value to the bottom line and how can you measure that? If you need a SAR budget allocate one because there are some business support and compliance roles that a business needs as they grow. For all other roles you should be able to show a direct link between the role responsibilities and revenue, that is what you measure.
Finally, with all of these factors considered, before you post your job ad on Indeed, consider the Gig economy! Can you meet that business need in some other way without hiring? If the answer is yes then my recommendation is always to try that first.