In this blog, we look at why it benefits trusts to have a managed service provider (MSP) involved in leading this work, and how this can benefit not just supply teacher recruitment, but also wider performance in the sector.
A crowded market
As a multi-academy trust (MAT) you will recognise some of the challenges that your decision-making staff will face when managing large-scale supply chains. Around 500 different recruitment agencies are operating in the UK, sourcing permanent and contract staff for the education sector. If you’re going to market for suppliers, the likelihood is you will face a barrage of requests and end up with multiple agencies on your preferred supplier lists (PSL).
As most of you will know, most suppliers in education need to be on the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) framework. Lot One of this has around 90 agencies and MATs will go to them, before embarking on a process to understand their compliance status and finances. If they’re happy with these details, they will add them to the PSL.
This is where the hard work really starts. Someone at your trust will have to do the heavy lifting. That means engaging all potential suppliers on your PSL, ascertaining their rates and other fees and then, if you start partnering with them, managing the relationship on an ongoing basis to ensure you’re receiving the best possible service at consistent rates. You can’t realistically leave these suppliers to operate independently, you will need to have some sort of check system in place.
The individual in charge of managing this will have to negotiate rates with each agency on the PSL and gauge weigh-up costs, geographical locations and reach, and many other factors. More often than not, this job falls to someone without experience managing such a highly complex process, which will impact efficiency and costs.
Growing workload
As you might have gathered, this is an expensive process; not just in financial terms, but also in staff time. From our extensive experience of the education market, not many trusts have individuals working for them with that much free time to manage what is an increasingly multifaceted process. Unless there is a person solely dedicated to these tasks – and it is a full-time role – no one can ensure that agencies are submitting spend to the framework provider and offering the best possible deal to your institutions.
This is where we can help.
We ensure that all suppliers are fully onboarded with your trust. In fact, we recently appointed Laura Eaton as national supply agency manager, and her role is entirely focused on this area of work. All agencies we operate with work on one margin to supply, and that stays the same, regardless of staffing volumes, which you will recognise is not always the case in education.
You may have seen from our recent blog that we knew of one provider that supplied staff into 45% of the trust’s schools but had seven different pay rates for teaching assistants, eight for cover supervisors, and nine for teachers. This isn’t a sustainable way of working, nor does it provide a fair deal for trusts or supply teachers.
By working with The Supply Register, we remove the administrative burden that many trusts face by adopting a PSL-led approach of paying individual agencies for their work. Instead, we provide one consolidated invoice per week, which reduces time, costs, and more. Working in this way also means that trust staff have to deal with one point of call where all requirements, timesheets and key information are funnelled through, rather than different portals for each supplier.
Smarter supply teacher recruitment
We also provide detailed data and analytics that enable trusts to make smarter, more insightful and strategic decisions. Unless a MAT has access to its own business intelligence platform, and time to review and analyse the data, it won’t be able to do this.
We know that this approach works; over the past 12 months, we’ve onboarded several new clients who previously opted for their own PSL-led approach but then found the administrative and financial burden overly taxing. It’s easy to see why.
The consolidated approach is hugely beneficial. It reduces costs, saves time and frees up staff for one of the multiple other tasks they will likely be responsible for. Trusts then gain from a standardised and streamlined approach to supplier management.
If your trust is wasting time and resources managing multiple suppliers, speak to Laura or other members of our expert team to find out how we can make your lives significantly easier.
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