Comment

17 March 2010 | By DeeDee Doke

How did the Ides of March turn out for you? Otherwise known as 15 March, it’s a date that lives in infamy, as they say, because of the link with Julius Caesar’s assassination. Perhaps it will live in infamy here if the Agency Workers Directive was passed, as anticipated into UK legislation, on Monday. Actually, it’s not its passage that will bring employers and recruiters harm - it will be the ignorance of its nuances and turning a blind eye to its inevitability that will bode badly for the workplace. Ignore it at your peril.

The desire to put one’s head in the sand emerged as a concern elsewhere over the last fortnight. In informal correspondence, a recruiter expressed anger that we had published comments by Susan Bor, RBS director of group resourcing, to the effect that she planned to cut agency spend. The writer did not accept our invitation to offer up, on the record, his own rebuttal to this. Many external recruiters worry, and some with good reason, about the trend by internal recruiters to cut back what they spend with agencies. But ignoring this serves no one. Forewarned is forearmed. Get creative. Up your game to meet the service challenge.