Article
One: Your Legal Obligations when Advertising
Vacancies by Gareth Williams of Penn Legal
Your advertisements are the public face of your company. In most cases they represent the first point of contact between you and your client or candidate as well as shaping your image in the eyes of the public. It is likely that you incur a significant expenditure of resources in ensuring that your advertisements portray you in a favourable light, yet have you ever considered that you might be breaking the law when you place an advert?
Ever since the introduction of The Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 (the ‘regulations’) came into force recruitment consultancies have had a range of legal obligations with which to comply in respect of their advertisements. Although compliance with these obligations is very easy (and certainly doesn’t require the involvement of a solicitor) they are often overlooked.
So what steps must you take to ensure that your adverts are kept legal?
Well, there are several steps that you must take. You must:
1. State in every advertisement whether you are acting as an ‘agency’ or an ‘employment business’.
Broadly speaking, you will be acting as an ‘agency’ when you are proposing to introduce permanent candidates to a client and you will be an ‘employment business’ when you are proposing to supply a client with a temp.
2. Include extra information when you are specifying a rate of pay.
When you are advertising a vacancy and you are specifying a rate of pay you need to specify the location of the work
together with the skills, experience and qualifications that the candidate will need to receive that rate of pay.
3. State the full name of your company in easily legible or audible words.
The full name of your company must be stated. In addition to this you can also use your trading name.
4. No phantom positions.
You must ensure that you have details about any vacancy that you advertise and the authority of the client to advertise for that position.
Does this matter?
The sanctions for breaching these rules can be severe and include fines of up to £5,000 or a banning order preventing you from being involved in the operation of a recruitment consultancy for up to 10 years. It is also possible that breaches of these rules could be pleaded in civil proceedings either as a cause of a legal action or a
defense to a legal claim that you bring.
The main significance of breaching the rules in respect of advertising may however be that it is indicative of a broader failure to keep up to date and compliant with your legal obligations. This may put your rivals, clients, disgruntled candidates and indeed the DTI upon notice as to other breaches of the regulations and could lead to investigations being commenced against you.
What can you do about it?
In order to make your compliance with your advertising obligations as easy as possible, a free guide is available to assist your marketing department. This guide can be obtained by
visiting the Penn Legal site
Gareth Williams specialises in Recruitment Agency Law at Penn Legal. For further information email
agency@pennlegal.co.uk
or telephone 0870 043 4361.
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