That's Books and Entertainment: How to Protect Yourself From Coronavirus Scams

That's Books and Entertainment: How to Protect Yourself From Coronavirus Scams: Amid the fear and confusion caused by Coronavirus pandemic, scammers are taking advantage of scared and vulnerable people. Over £800,000 h...

APSCo responds to Chancellor statement on support for businesses and IR35 delay

In response to the announcement that the off-payroll implementation will be delayed for 12 months, Sam Hurley, Operations Director at APSCo, and co-chair of HMRC’s IR35 Forum said: “After five years of lobbying Government for a proper review of IR35, we are very pleased and relieved on behalf of our members that the Government has taken this action to remove extra burdens from the recruitment sector. Even so, we are disappointed that it has taken a crisis of this magnitude for the Government to take action.

“Although many of our members have spent an enormous amount of time, effort and resources getting ready for this change, we believe this delay will be welcomed by all our members and the entire sector.

"Now is not the right time to increase the cost of make flexible labour, or the hiring of contingent labour harder, when our sector is facing unprecedented times. This delay may also have the added benefit of kick starting the hiring of remote workers who operate via a PSC from end clients who have so far, as a response to off-payroll legislation, put a blanket ban on contractors working through this model.”

Commenting on the other measures announced yesterday by Rishi Sunak, Tania Bowers, Legal Counsel at APSCo said: “We are obviously pleased the Chancellor has moved so quickly with a £330B stimulus package including expansion of the business interruption scheme introduced in the budget, cash grants to smaller businesses and a commitment to consult with both business and trade unions to determine what else may be needed. APSCo is already consulting with policy advisers at the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to ensure that they have the information and data they need about the impact of this crisis on the professional recruitment sector to help them make decisions quickly.”

“As ever with these measures the devil will be in the detail. We have seen a massive increase in enquiries to our legal helpdesk from our members - in the space of a week we have had numerous enquiries about SSP and contractor rights on top of the usual high number of queries around the implementation of IR35. While some of our larger members may well have the financial resilience to ride the storm, we have to remember that the majority of recruitment firms in the UK are SMEs. This is a sector that will be hit extremely hard given that hiring intentions in many industries are likely to be put on hold or reduced for the foreseeable future.”

“What we also need from Government is further clarity. We need clarification on how it will define SMEs in terms of the proposed SSP refund in the emergency legislation. If it is the Companies Act definition, then agency workers will not count in the assessment of 250 employees. However, if it is the Equality Act definition then agency workers will count, meaning that small recruitment businesses with large numbers of agency workers won't be entitled to SSP refund which could potentially put them out of business.”

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Job figures latest: Massive Spike in Demand

- Permanent vacancies up 87% month-on-month
- Contract vacancies up 84% month-on-month
- Permanent placements up 11.4% year-on-year
- Contract placements up 5.3% year-on-year
- Salaries for permanent rolls dip 2.6% year-on-year
- Huge uptick in demand for talent

January 2020 saw an absolutely huge spike in demand for talent with permanent vacancies up 87% month-on-month while contract vacancies also rose by 84%.

This is according to the latest monthly Recruitment Trends Snapshot report from the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) in conjunction with growth analytics platform cube19.

While this represents a massive uptick it must be viewed in the context of the previous month, December, which saw not only the normal seasonal downturn but also uncertainty around the late General Election which put the brakes on all but crucial hiring.

Year-on-year the picture is more stable with permanent vacancies remaining stable and an increase of 4.6% in contract vacancies suggesting that last year employers took a business as usual approach to hiring despite the ever evolving economic climate.

Ongoing skill shortages

Permanent and contract placements were also up year-on-year by 11.4% and 5.3% respectively with recruitment forms reporting a tight candidate market and ongoing skill shortages across all professionals sectors

This aligns with reports from the British Chambers of Commerce which state that more than seven in ten companies reported hiring difficulties in the final three months of 2019. However, month on month placements jump to an increase of 35% and almost 5% respectively, reflecting the usual seasonal delay in start dates for new roles.

Salaries soften, revenue rises

Salaries for permanent roles fell 2.6% year-on-year and 5% month-on-month as businesses watch their purse strings amid Brexit uncertainty. Despite this, the recruitment sector remained resilient, as recruiters reported 40% increased revenue from permanent placements year-on-year, indicating a marked increase in sales volumes.

Ann Swain, CEO of APSCo said: “After a slow December which was heavily impacted by political uncertainty, we’ve seen a welcome rebound in hiring activity. Skills shortages are rife, which can only mean increased opportunities for recruiters and while the government has introduced a National Skills Fund as a way of growing our own talent to mitigate talent gaps in the future, access to skilled professionals from Europe and beyond must be maintained

Jo McGuire, Global Sales Director at cube19 added: “Thankfully, it looks like the clouds are beginning to clear as we move away from Brexit. After years of political stalling there appears, at last, to be a purpose and direction back in the economy. With that in mind, after the December blip, 2020 could well be a bumper year for the recruitment sector with a return to financial consistency as businesses take the blinkers off with regards to spending and re-engage with hiring.”

Full line-up announced for exchange – the employee experience event

HR’s most insightful event releases its impressive speaker list for 7th May 2020.

ExChange,  the employee experience event, has today just revealed its full roster of presenters, with speakers from all areas of HR, workplace culture, workplace diversity and employee experience leading the way in the day’s discussions.

The event,jointly hosted by the Employee Engagement Alliance and world-leading HR technology provider, Benefex, will gather together the industry’s leading lights to discuss the best ways to create, manage, and develop employee experiences in the 2020s.

Attendees will be able to listen to the latest insights and practical advice for tackling today’s workplace culture issues, and learn how to develop strategies for taking their organisation’s employee experience even further.

The event will take place on the Ohana floor of the Salesforce Tower (formerly Heron Tower) in London, offering sweeping views of the city in the tranquil, comfortable setting of a business with a market-leading employee experience.

Ruth Dance, host of ExChange and Managing Director of the Employee Engagement Alliance said, “The best way to improve your workplace culture is holistically, by creating employee experiences that meet and exceed your people’s needs from their first day. For our second ExChange, we’re bringing together some of the biggest names in the industry, and they’ll be showing us all how to transform employee experiences for the coming decade.”

ExChange speaker, and Founder & CEO of Benefex, Matt Macri-Waller remarked, “This is going to be a fascinating event. I'm delighted to take part alongside like-minded business leaders and HR professionals who can see change in the world of work and want to take their organisations into the future. But we won’t just focus on what’s coming in the distant future; there’s plenty of take-home advice that we can all start using right away, and that’s really exciting, too.”

Leaders and innovators from the world of employee experience will spend the day sharing critical insights with CEOs, HR Directors, Chief People Officers, and Communication and Employee Engagement specialists.

Full speaker line-up is:-
Mike Adams OBE – CEO, Purple
Linda Aiello – SVP International Employee Success, Salesforce
Emma Bridger – Managing Director, PeopleLab
Rachel Clacher – Co-Founder & Director, Moneypenny, Founder & Trustee at WeMindTheGap
Emma Codd – Global Special Advisor on Inclusion, Deloitte
Cynthia Davis – CEO & Founder, BAME Recruitment, Chair of the Board of Directors, Pop Up Projects
Anoushka Dossa – Director – Talent, Creative Access
Tricia Driver – Founder and CEO, A New Normal
Simon Fanshawe OBE – Partner, Diversity by Design
David Littlechild – Global Head of Culture, Engagement & Wellbeing, LSEG
Matt Macri-Waller – Founder & CEO, Benefex
Sarah Meurer – Head of Internal Communications, Nestlé UK&I
Linda Moir – Owner, Putneyred
Kate Nash OBE – CEO, PurpleSpace, Creator, #PurpleLightUp Movement
Tim Oldman – Founder & CEO, Leesman
Emma O’Toole – Facebook
Jane Roques-Shaw – Global Executive Director, Culture and Engagement, WarnerMedia
Anna Whitehouse – Founder, Mother Pukka
Keith Williams – Founder, KMW3

More details on the speakers can be found at: www.exchange.events/speakers

Key facts:-
Event date – May 7th, 2020
Location – Ohana Floor, Salesforce Tower, London
Tickets – www.exchange.events

Eight scam calls per second into the UK

Overseas call centre scams have been a massive problem in the UK for a number of years, and it’s still ongoing, with an average of 21 million scam calls per month in the UK. A horrifying eight every second.

 BBC’s ‘Panorama – Spying on the Scammers’ last night showed a huge amount of insight into one call centre in India which focuses solely on scamming victims in the UK, Australia and the USA.

The scams they’re committing are sometimes known as ‘impersonation fraud’ (where a scammer pretends to be someone they’re not) and it is one of the UK’s most common types of scam. 

In the year between April 2018 and April 2019, 23,500 complaints of this type of fraud were made to the City of London Police’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau.

Financial losses to impersonation fraud are in excess of £9m per year, but it is believed by the Bureau that up to 60% of cases never get reported.

Has the UK trained scammers to commit fraud against us?

Since 1998, major UK companies have been outsourcing to foreign-based call centres to handle their customer service processes. Many banks, utility companies, communication providers and financial services have moved their call centres abroad, predominantly to India, in an effort to save money on more expensive UK premises and staff wages.

Where call centre scams mainly started with a few rogue employees working in genuine call centres making some extra money on the side by stealing customers’ data from their workplace, there are numerous call centres in India where their entire business is cold-calling and scamming people.

By working in large, genuine call centres previously, these people gained the experience required to enable them to effectively plan and undertake scams.

Some call centres even employ ‘Culture Trainers’ who teach workers how to sound British by teaching them conversational skills, popular culture, British colloquialisms and how to neutralise their accents.

Companies are now moving call centres back to the UK, so what will the workers do now?

Due to the lack of data security in foreign call centres, which caused major data breaches and fines in the past, some UK companies have, or are intending to  planning to, move all operations back to the UK. 

For example, banking giant Santander moved all of their call centres back to the UK in 2011, with insurance company Aviva choosing to do the same. 

In 2003, BT outsourced their call centre operations to India, Bangladesh and the Philippines but have now pledged to have all operations moved back to the UK by the year 2020.

With several large companies pulling operations away from foreign countries and call centres closing down, this means that many workers will be left with no income but will still have the communication skills they have learnt. 

With unemployment doubling in India in the last few years and the resulting competition for jobs being so high, it’s no wonder a lot of workers are turning to scammer gangs of when so much money can be earned by those with the necessary skills.

These gangs are almost impossible for UK police to trace, the scammers can change their phone numbers and IP addresses to make it appear as if they are in an entirely different country. So, unlike in the UK, there are few consequences of committing these crimes so there is no real deterrent to prevent them from happening.

For further fraud resources, do take a look at the online fraud guides of https://www.kisbridgingloans.co.uk/guide-to-fraud-prevention/

(Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay )