10 Times To Consider Outsourcing Your Recruitment Back Office

It’s becoming more and more common for businesses to outsource certain tasks so they can focus on growing the business. The recruitment industry is leading the way, using outsourced back office and accountancy services to allow their staff to focus on their key skillset – recruiting.

We’ve heard many reasons to outsource, and the ten biggest are these:

1. Right from the Start

Particularly at the beginning of an agency’s life, as much of the team’s time as possible has to focus on bringing in money. By outsourcing from the word go, you free up your time to make placements without having to handle complex credit control, bookkeeping and invoicing issues.

2. Key Account Staff Leaving

Someone in every accounts department is the cornerstone who’s been there for a long time and learned all the ins and outs of your business. Sadly, these valued colleagues don’t last forever, wanting to move on to something new. Finding a replacement with the same skill set is very hard and that’s before you factor in rebuilding trust – something that takes a lot of time.

3. Workload Increases

As an agency grows and develops, it’s inevitable the accounts team will end up working flat out to complete tasks to deadline and keep the business going. Bringing in another member of staff is an additional cost that can be difficult, especially if it means finding new, roomier offices.

4. Required Skills are Missing

We hear this most often when an agency has been running for just a little while, as the agency’s admin grows from small and simple tasks to requiring VAT returns, management accounts and other, more complex compliance tasks. Sometimes your existing team needs to upskill or expand – and both take time that you may not have.

5. Confined Office Space

A back office team needs a back office – telephones, computers, printers, filing cabinets and photocopiers. As the business grows, a bigger team can spill over into the room assigned to your sales team, causing friction.

6. Industry-based Seasonal Recruiting

Most industries work a typical 48 working week, giving you a constant level of business, but education recruiters and members of other specialised industries will see a shorter working year – but you’re still paying the same for your accounts team.

7. Winning Large Contract PSL

Winning large contracts is always a goal, but a sudden sharp rise in the number of contractors placed means an equal rise in the number of invoices raised, credit control processes running, etc. It’s another way that your core staff can suddenly be overstretched.

8. No Cover for Holidays or Sickness

At SME level most agencies will only have one team member handling their back office in the early days, but that means that unexpected illness can leave you without back office cover – and even holidays can see the agency scrambling to make everything work.

9. Director Doing the Books

We see this far too often; the director of the agency will be managing sales and their team but also trying to look after invoicing, credit control and bookkeeping for the company. This is somewhere between two and three full-time jobs being done by the same person, and it can lead to errors or failing to take full advantage of opportunities.

10.A Distraction from Sales

Most owners come from a background in recruitment; they know how to recruit and to manager their recruiters, but the accounts department is unfamiliar territory. Understanding processes and timescales can be tricky and interacting with the team seems daunting.

We regularly hear from new agencies who for one reason or another are looking to outsource their back office work. We have extensive experience in taking over existing back office departments to provide a continuous service without their clients even noticing the shift, and we’ve worked with recruitment agencies in many different sectors, giving us a clear idea of individual needs.

Our clients often comment that they now have much more time to focus on the profit-earning work of the company with the detailed reporting they need to make the decisions.

To find out more about how we can help your company in particular please contact our office today.


Stewart Roberts

Written by Stewart Roberts

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