PLAYING BY THE RULES...

Tax and NI – never a nice subject but one I will start my blog with. We play by the rules at iD, we put all staff through Payroll as PAYE so they have tax and NI deducted, we also pay employers NI contribution which can be costly for us... so it really gets my goat when I hear of agencies that don’t have the same standards.

This has been an ongoing issue since the government changed the law several years ago, we spent time and money ensuring we covered all bases, but I know full well other competitor agencies haven’t and they still pay their staff by invoice. I recently was privy to a competitors staff contract and if I was one of their clients I would be very worried indeed! The loophole they have is that it means they treat the Brand Ambassador as a contractor not a worker which ultimately means the staff member can subcontract out the work, this means the agency loses all control over who is working for them…For the client it means any tom, Dick or Harry is out their being the face of their brand…

We pride ourselves on the fact we hand pick every member of staff for each campaign and all of those staff will have been met and interviewed face to face. So for agencies like us who do everything the right way it’s hard to compete with the ones that break the rules, they can cost campaigns cheaper because they don’t have the employers contributions to think about. Moreover, in a economically challenged environment like we have at the moment every penny saved is a good one, right? Ummm not really…

These days anyone can set up a staffing agency, all you need is a laptop, phone and a couple of mates who do promo, but using these 2 bob agencies can be really shortsighted, as a client you may save a couple of quid but the damage in the long run to your brand could be worth thousands!

Thanks,

Claire Bloxham
Staffing Director
iD Staffing
0207 428 1451
claireb@idstaffing.com