Yesterday was Michaelmas Day, the traditional ‘Hiring Fair’ day and historically significant for recruiters!
Over the past few weeks there have been lots of Invitations to Tender for the supply of temporary staff - lots to look at and some to respond to. One we have just responded to was generally well thought through, but they required huge screeds of information about Health & Safety which was irrelevant to our role. Protecting yourself from badly drafted liability clauses adds a lot of hassle to the process of preparing a tender.
Desperate to protect themselves from the risk of prosecution, but unable to work out where the threat would come from, their legal adviser must have decided the supplier should accept all the risks and responsibilities, even though these are uninsurable by us, because we don’t direct or supervise the work and its not on our premises.
A greater concern is that another potential client, who spends millions on agency staff, recently retendered for the next three years, but didn’t announce it on OJEU or anywhere except their own web site. Apparently, one is supposed to go to their website every day and check whether they are inviting expressions of interest! Only existing suppliers were contacted. This may well make the job of the buyer easier, but deprives local suppliers of the chance to bid and it deprives their organisation of an excellent supplier at competitive rates.