L.E.A.D Academy Trust’s approach to temporary staff procurement

The recruitment challenges faced by L.E.A.D. Academy Trust will be familiar to many of you.  The MAT has experienced rapid growth and due to this, supply cover spend has grown for day-to-day, short-term and long-term periods.  The MAT’s existing temporary staffing model was becoming increasingly costly and unsustainable across their multiple sites. Local agreements at academy level with different suppliers made it hard to monitor compliance standards both in terms of safer recruitment and procurement best practice. The challenge of collecting supply data consistently across such a large and growing Trust became apparent.

Today, however, L.E.A.D. Academy Trust partners with a Master Vendor to manage recruitment for its daily hires, whilst also developing a joint offer for professional salaried and student roles. These positions span a variety of skills and expertise, from entry-level trainee teachers and teaching assistants to heads of departments. The Master Vendor provides local recruiters and support services from their regional delivery hubs as well as from their service delivery centre, to support temporary hiring.  This dual approach ensures talent acquisition leaders and hiring managers have access to both local advisers and national resources.  The new model can be quickly scaled to the needs of the organisation, so that at very short notice, the MAT can access additional recruitment and just as easily scale back when the demand has been satisfied.The Master Vendor has helped in providing localised governance while a central structure has been developed jointly to ensure the programme delivers and accelerates the impact of the transformed recruitment function whilst addressing regional and local needs. 

Key benefits of this approach include:

• Invoices for all workers are supplied by the Master Vendor. PSL agency invoices are consolidated and issued as one invoice per academy location with a supporting audit trail, minimising and streamlining the process
• All supply is now funnelled via the technology platform allowing bank workers and PSL agencies to submit timesheets to one portal, enabling hiring managers to log in and approve all timesheets
• The implementation of the Master Vendor service has ensured that costs are completely transparent with an agreed worker pay structure that is recognised by schools, academies, MATs and unions. The agreement has meant an increase in pay for workers, whilst reducing the overall cost to the MAT
• The Master Vendor model has retained and cultivated a PSL of 19 agencies across the MAT that all work on standardised pay rates, margins and legislative costs, since its inception nearly three years ago
• A single technology platform enables detailed management information and report building functionality that is in real-time, both locally and centrally. This management information can be accessed and analysed by location, department, key stage or any other relevant data point stored within the technology platform.

Are you considering how best to approach the procurement of temporary staff and would like more information on a master vendor arrangement? Talk to the suppliers on CPC’s Temporary and Permanent Staffing framework agreement and put your requirements out to competition under Lot 16 Master Vendor. 

Please contact the framework manager Ria Logan on [email protected] or 0161 974 0955 for more information.