What does an ethical recruitment company look like, and how can businesses work with recruitment agencies to ensure ethical practices throughout their supply chain?
Why You Should Work With An Ethical Recruitment Company:
Recruiting migrant workers can drive huge benefits for both individuals and businesses: companies enjoy more cost-effective labour with specific skill-sets, and workers have the chance to experience new cultures and build new lives for themselves and their families. However, several new trends are enabling the unethical recruitment of migrant workers to reach epidemic levels in the UAE.
What Makes An Ethical Recruitment Company:
- World-Class Standards
Ethical recruitment companies will not charge fees to candidates. Many disreputable agencies in the UAE charge migrant workers the equivalent of a year’s salary for the vague promise of an interview, jettisoning the worker into debt and immediately painting a negative brand image of the client company. Free recruitment from an agency in migrant-labour communities is becoming increasingly appealing to UAE-based businesses eager to make savings, however the real cost to the commercial productivity of the company – as well as the devastating personal cost to each individual worker in the migrant workforce – is not a price worth paying.
- Forward-Thinking
Like the most successful businesses, ethical recruitment companies understand that a small short-term sum paid by the client will generate far greater long-term results than forcing workers to foot the bill. In addition to truly caring about the candidates they work with and committing to the moral code within which they operate, ethical recruitment companies will be upfront about the fees they charge client businesses and will practice a strict code of conduct to protect workers.
- Reputable
Ethical recruitment companies are fully licensed and can present a variety of evidence to prove their authenticity. Case studies and testimonials from candidates and clients alike provide the first-hand feedback from real people who have engaged with the recruitment agency, proving that the agency has nothing to hide, and revealing to potential clients exactly how their services work.
- Honest and Communicative
Ethical recruitment agencies will operate transparent processes and allow visibility into everything they do. The best recruiters will practice close communication with you and their candidates, with everything consistent throughout the process, from worker contracts given in their home country matching those given by the client in the UAE to the quality of pay and conditions received as promised.
How To Ensure You Are Working With An Ethical Recruitment Company:
- Do Your Research
Use the above as a guide to finding an ethical recruitment company: ask for recommendations from former colleagues or contemporaries whom you trust, and whose companies enjoy high levels of productivity and good talent attraction and retention, meaning that they look after their staff.
- Start As You Mean To Go On
Set a precedent from the first time you engage with your recruitment company: be clear in exactly what you want your recruitment company to do, what results you expect, how your workers should be treated.
- Build A Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Strategy
Build a CSR that is unique to your company and employee needs. Look to the World Employment Confederation and the International Labour Organisation for the best practice and legal advice to create a dedicated Ethical Recruitment document for your business.
- Survey Your Workers
Distribute an anonymous survey to all your workers and ask them to answer questions on the conduct of your recruitment agency – does their current pay packet match what the recruitment agency promised, do they still retain control of their own passport, have they been mistreated/lied to during the recruitment process – to understand the way your recruitment agency truly operates.
Working with an ethical recruitment company will help you build trust with your contractors and permanent staff, which will result in a higher quality of work.
Get in touch with us today to begin your ethical recruitment strategy.
