Currently the company employs 341 staff, and they intend to hire 40 customs clearance and operational staff between now and the 29th March, in both permanent and temporary-to-permanent roles. The company aims achieve more than £400m turnover by 2022.

 

Mark Chopping, the internal recruitment and acquisition manager at Europa, will be managing the recruitment programme.

 

"We’re now in the process of recruiting and would like to get our new team in place as soon as possible," said Chopping.

 

"We’re in a unique situation where we’re having to plan for vastly different outcomes without a clear idea of which will prevail – we can’t afford not to prepare for a no deal Brexit, but if a last-minute deal is made we might no longer need the roles we’re recruiting for.

 

"We’re dealing with this challenge by being completely transparent throughout the recruitment process, making sure all candidates are fully aware of the possible outcomes."

 

"There will be incentives in place for all our permanent recruits in the event that their role does not continue due to a last-minute Brexit deal. With the growth Europa has seen over the last few years, we also anticipate that we’ll have room for people to be redeployed to other areas of the business."

 

Managing director Andrew Baxter said: "We have plans in place to ensure we’re ready to switch to a full customs clearance from 29th March if necessary, and we’ve been engaging with clients. We have expanded capacity in our 1Hub facility to create space for freight that may become slowed down by the clearance process, and reviewed varied options for alternative shipping routes. We’re facing the possibility of a big change, and a challenging one at that, but we’re doing all we can to be prepared for all outcomes."

 

Source: Insider Media South East

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A major increase in staff numbers, such as Europa Worldwide Group is hoping to achieve with their 11% staff increase goal, can cause unforeseen problems for HR, admin and accounts job tasks if the company’s method of recording time worked has not yet been brought into the 21st century. 

 

Let’s take the most old-fashioned form of attendance management: the paper timesheet. 

 

It is very easy for staff to fill in timesheets incorrectly. Sometimes this can be deliberate time fraud, but sometimes it is just new staff getting confused, or people forgetting to fill in their timesheets until a week later, by which time they’ve forgotten their exact shift details and are likely to just fudge it. 

 

Even if the details are all correct, most paper timesheets must then be manually transferred to a database (usually an Excel spreadsheet) before being sent to payroll software. 

 

There are many opportunities for human error to kick in during this time-consuming process – e.g. making an unrecognised typo in entering, or misreading employee’s handwriting (1 or 7? O or 0 or D?). This can result in incorrect payslips, and very unhappy employees!

 

Incorrect data can also foul up HR tasks too, making it much more difficult to spot issues like adherence to the Working Time Directive or someone taking three 30 minute breaks plus lunch.

 

At Time and Attendance South East, we offer specialised attendance management software which collects attendance data in real time and makes it easy to export or make reports using that information. This system can work either with smartcards or with biometrics. 

 

Our smartcards are about the size of a credit card and fit nicely into most wallets. The Radio Frequency technology means that you don’t need to physically swipe the cards, just hold them up near the reader terminal. This reduces wear and tear.

 

For the ultimate deterrent against time theft, we can provide a hand scanner and/or a fingerprint reader. Smartcards can be lost, or swapped with colleagues to input fake times. This isn’t the case with hands and fingers!