Immigration: where do recruiters stand on the issues?

Peter Crush

Immigration is likely to be the stand-out issue at next year’s election. But what role have recruiters played in shaping the UK’s foreign workforce? Peter Crush looks at the evidence. 

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realise that with fewer than nine months to go before the General Election, there’s going to be only one key issue: immigration.

Despite unemployment figures hitting new lows every quarter, there are still concerns that too many of Britain’s brain surgeons, electricians, plumbers, pickers and everyone else for that matter, are seen to come from abroad. This sentiment led to the UK Independence Party sweeping the board in the recent European Elections with 27.5% of the vote.

Rising anti-immigration sentiment is now reversing a proud post-war trend that Britons were increasingly accepting of foreign workers. What vexes people is the fact recent ONS data shows non-UK born people finding jobs in the UK grew by 225,000 to 4.26 million during 2013, compared to only 192,000 for actual British-born people. And, this came at a time when there were still nearly 1 million 16-24 year olds out of work.

Figures also show that one in three Londoners was now born outside the UK. So it’s no surprise when politicians from all parties jump on the immigration bandwagon too – everything from the ‘British Jobs for British People’ mantra of Gordon Brown, to Home Secretary Theresa May last year claiming that for every 100 migrants coming into Britain, it cost 23 British people their jobs.

The narrative has normally been that immigrants ‘steal’ jobs Brits could do. While some still doubt this, even white-collar workers now have something to complain about: a government report recently revealed a fifth of jobs in key industries like engineering now go to foreign nationals. In 2010, just 14,000 of the 181,000 new entrants into the UK workforce were British.

Easy option?

For some, it’s recruitment companies that are squarely responsible for this. They are accused of going for the easy option, by hiring a ready pool of people without scouring for home-grown talent first. But can they really be blamed for doing this, when bosses like Lance Batchelor, the outgoing CEO of Domino’s Pizza, recently said those overseas workers he employed had a better work ethic and lower attrition? He actually wanted more immigrants to come last year, because his business had 1,000 vacancies British people simply wouldn’t apply for.

Rob Mansell, MD of catering and hospitality recruitment firm, Cherryred, says he sympathises with the problem. “The UK’s restaurant sector is totally reliant on workers who do not originate from the UK,” he says, claiming that at least three-quarters of applicants he gets are from migrant workers currently living in the UK.

But Mansell admits agencies are caught in a catch-22. The clients he works for crave confidence that their workforce will be stable enough so that they can consider growing (thus creating more jobs), and he argues this fact alone often puts migrants ahead of the queue. “The work ethic of migrants tends to be completely different,” he says. “In our experience the UK workforce doesn’t want to work unsociable hours, and there’s a sense of apathy towards the roles we recruit for. This is a side of the migrant workers debate this is often overlooked.” 

Quite rightly, the attitudinal issues UK workers are accused of is not something agencies can do much about. However, what Mansell says he definitely won’t do (and what he knows does happen), is go direct to countries, and pluck talent locally, with a view to bringing them back. “We know of several recruitment consultants who base themselves overseas solely for the purpose of attracting skilled workers to fill multiple roles for clients.” These firms are often, argues Mansell, on a retainer because they can guarantee cheap labour. “We just don’t go down this road for ethical reasons,” he says.

Sourcing skills

For European talent, there’s no requirement for agencies to look within their country’s talent pool first (this differs for outside Europe, however), so any agencies that do are only competing against those who do not. And, says Tony Moss, MD of Your World Healthcare, which recruits staff for the NHS, often their hand is forced: “Qualified medical staff are increasingly over-represented by foreign nationals,” he says. “That’s because training places that were reduced several years ago are now hitting frontline services.” He adds: “There just aren’t the people here in the UK to fill demand. It’s not that we want to, but we have to look overseas – we’ve recently done a recruitment roadshow in Portugal where we found qualified radiographers working in Subway.”

Virtually all of his roles are on the government’s critical skills list, meaning bringing people in (from outside Europe) is still reasonably straightforward, although most still come from the EU.

But he says there is also a much wider point that needs to be understood. In fact, agencies should feel  proud (rather than guilty) of bringing in foreign workers. He says: “I’m not a political person, but I think we need to look at the broader picture: that the UK needs to be seen as a friendly country to come to, and that agencies have a real responsibility in showcasing this.”

Moss adds: “We need to be very careful about making generalisations about immigrants when we all know there is a worldwide skills shortage. What worries me is that if the UK is not seen as a good place to work, then people will go elsewhere, and that will make recruiting good people even harder for recruitment companies like us.”

According to Kevin Green, CEO of the REC, employers want more flexibility, and a better visa system to ensure they can hire who they want – and recruiters will naturally fall into meeting employers’ demands.

In an interview in April, Green said: “Immigration will be a big issue in the upcoming general election. But employers do want a global labour market, otherwise they’re going to constrain growth, and be prevented from growing as they want to.”

The political storm brewing 

Immigration was responsible for 46% of the UK’s population growth last year

183,400 more immigrants arrived than emigrants left in year to June 2013

Between 2004 (when Poland joined the EU) and 2010, more than one million Eastern European workers arrived in the UK (government estimates predicted it would be 13,000).

Non-British born people comprise 17% of the UK workforce

Between 2002-2012 the employment rate for British born workers fell from 74% to 72.5%

The rules

The PM has said he wants to limit immigration to “tens of thousands” (rather than the net 212,000 that arrived in 2013. Although Britain has little power to cut European migrants, late last year government has passed legislation preventing European migrants from claiming benefits for three months in a bid to ensure that only those who had a job lined up first would settle here. For those coming from outside of Europe, recruiters need to prove this person is filling a job that cannot be filled by a settled worker. This is capped at 20,700 per year, although if the entrant will earn more than £150,000 per year, this doesn’t apply. Generally, these people must have NVQ Level 3 or above.