Peninsula’s support in solidifying our diversity policies has been invaluable

As an accredited umbrella company, Umbrella.co.uk employs temporary workers and enables them to carry out several short-term contracts for agencies and end-clients.

They employ around 60 staff internally, but manage thousands of agency workers.

CEO Nick Holmes describes how they worked with Peninsula to solidify current practices around diversity into company policies.

Umbrella.co.uk builds a large percentage of their contractor base through connections with recruitment agencies.

These agencies refer their temp workers to Umbrella.co.uk to manage their payroll externally. So, it’s essential to build strong partnerships with recruitment agencies.

Understandably, agencies prefer to form partnerships with umbrella companies who champion workplace diversity.

It means that they generally only work with providers who share these values, and can demonstrate this in the form of written policies.

And while Umbrella.co.uk has always been a diversity-friendly business, they needed help proving this with solid policies.

Wanting to create tangible policies, Nick reached out to Peninsula.

He was then quickly referred to Peninsula’s HR documentation team.

Drew, a specialist on this team, set up some meetings with Umbrella.co.uk. Once he got a thorough idea of what Nick wanted, he then sculpted the business’s processes to bring them in line with best practice – and created watertight paperwork to cement the changes.

One of the biggest changes included a new recruitment process. This involved asking agencies to use “blind” CVs – job applications without characteristics like gender or age. It means that candidates can’t accuse the business of bias.

Once the team was happy the policies reflected their values, it was time to roll them out. They wanted managers to fully embrace this new way of working.

So, Peninsula’s experts visited the team in their offices in Cheshire. They hosted a practical workshop to teach managers how to understand, implement, and embrace the new policies.

• In-person workshops

  Peninsula hosted practical sessions to make sure managers understood how to implement the new policies

• Bespoke policies

  Peninsula worked with Umbrella.co.uk to solidify their existing procedures and introduce new ones

As a result, the new policies mean that recruitment agencies are now confident that Umbrella.co.uk put diversity at the front and centre of their business.

The Sales Director can simply share a copy of expert HR documentation with potential partners. And as Peninsula worked with the team to roll out the policies, he can explain how they’re reflected in day-to-day operations.

The business now regularly features on agencies’ preferred supplier lists, and is amongst the top umbrella service providers in the UK.