On-Site Staff: to Employ or Not to Employ?

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Cledor fully understands the challenges of the property management sector and how vital the right on-site team is to the success of each and every scheme.

We take a helicopter view of your sites – brand new or fully established – and our fresh pair of eyes can help to restructure, reorganise, breathe some new life into the team that interacts with your occupiers every day.

In sourcing, placing, training and managing estate managers, concierges, cleaners, caretakers, and SIA licenced security personnel, we present to you a number of recruitment and engagement options. For an individual member of on-site staff or a whole team, your choice may depend on the following:

  • What does the lease say? Whether your client is the landlord (freeholder) or RMC/RTM, they may have obligations to provide an on-site building manager or concierge staff. It may be specific in that the staff are required to be employees of the RMC…or may leave their employment open to interpretation. In fact, the lease may leave it up to your client to engage on-site staff or not. So the first place to start – as usual – is the lease.

  • What does the client want? Armed with the facts as to what the lease says, you need to make sure your client gets what they want. There is a chance that whatever is in place it not entirely to the client’s liking, or they don’t necessarily know what their options are.

  • Don’t forget the staff themselves. Speak to them about their current arrangements. It could be that a change in how they are engaged is the best for your client too.

So what are your options? They are numerous but essentially fall into one of FOUR categories:

01. Holistic Management

Our most comprehensive option. We find you the staff, we’ll employ them, we’ll place them on a scheme of your choice, we’ll manage their pay (you just pay a monthly invoice), and we’ll provide the necessary ongoing training for them. In this holistic scenario, you and your client are free to interview any shortlisted staff members together with us. And once they’re in situ, we’ll deal with roster planning, and holiday and sickness cover.

This scenario is ideal for your clients who do not wish to employ any on-site staff – and equally, they don’t wish for you to employ them either! This scenario gives you ultimate flexibility and the least administration, of huge benefit when there is a large team to manage.

02. Permanent Placement

In this scenario, you benefit from our sourcing skills. Once the candidate is selected, we hand them over to YOU to employ, manage, pay and nurture. So in this case, we will source and place at the scheme of your choice, your new member of on-site staff. You pay a one-off fee, and either you (as the managing agent) or your client (e.g. RMC) would be the employer. Training through our academy is optional – but recommended!

Permanent placement works well when your firm has a great set-up for managing on-site staff but need the initial search to be done by a specialist.

03. Temp Placement

With this scenario, you take advantage of parachuting in a member of Cledor’s own site staff team, experienced, up to speed with how you work and au fait with the processes and systems used at the scheme in question – but for a fixed period of time, say to cover maternity leave. In fact, ahead of starting with you, we can arrange for an induction on site, so day 1 of temp cover ought to go smoothly. During the length of the period that our staff are engaged on your client’s site, we will manage them, pay them and give them any necessary training. It’s hassle-free option that could even be used as a trial for a more permanent role on that site.

04. Tailored

Our tailored option puts you in charge as the employer and manager of the payroll. We do the rest: sourcing, placing, managing and training. You can tweak this set up by having your client become the employer of the on-site staff but you manage the payroll. We are happy to talk to you about joint employment in this ‘tailored’ scenario, although caution is to be exercised, as there are tax implications that can become rather complex, tackled here.

In summary

1.     Understand exactly how your/your client’s on-site staff are engaged now.

2.     Check the lease – what is your client permitted to do.

3.     Speak to your client to understand their on-site staffing wish-list.

4.     Speak to the staff themselves. This could make all the difference.

5.     Review the above employment/engagement options – one or more of them may mean a better quality of on-site staff, more motivated staff, greater flexibility, less administration and hassle – and a significant service charge saving.

6.     Call us – if in doubt, a quick call will straighten things out.

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Nick Regnier

Line Bjorhovd