We understand from the DTI Standards Office that their present intention is that all Internet job boards providing work finding services to work seekers or staff finding services to hirers will be treated as Employment Agencies and governed by the new EAA Regulations.
This means among other things that job boards as well as recruitment agencies will have to confirm the identity of all work seekers before details are made available to hirers or other agencies.
Confirmation is being interpreted, in the published DTI/REC agreed guidelines, as seeing original identification documents and education certificates and the retention of copies of the documents for at least 12 months.
Since Internet job boards are essentially computer systems, not people, this document inspection requirement seems impossible to implement.
The requirement to see and copy original identity documents before sending CVs to employers will also be very difficult for most recruitment agencies in dealing with remote candidates and clients because of the problems of obtaining the documents concerned when a candidate is first registered, especially if the registration is carried out on the Internet or by email.
The guidelines imposed by the DTI are considerably more onerous than those adopted by the Home Office for employers to enable them to avoid prosecution for employment of illegal workers or racial discrimination.
Unlike Recruitment Agencies, Employment businesses which employ staff for supply to their clients are already subject to the Home Office rules for employers, and the DTI guidelines will present an additional workload in the early stages of hiring new staff.
The only people not affected by this will be opted out limited company contractors.
References:
http://www.dti.gov.uk/er/agency/regs-pl971.htm#agencies
(Who the Act applies to, Employment agencies)
http://www.dti.gov.uk/er/agency/conduct.pdf
(Part IV Regulations 19 & 29).
http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/default.asp?PageId=49
(Paragraphs 1-4).
It will be interesting to see whether the DTI will modify their guidelines following feedback from the seminars being conducted for members by the REC and Lawspeed over the next few weeks.
If not then many companies in the recruitment industry may find themselves operating illegally and liable to criminal prosecution from April 6th.
Michael Organe
New EAA work seeker identification Regulations apply to Internet job boards and on-line recruiters.
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