Services furnished by business, professional and specialist organisations

Tender description

Nottingham Trent University aims to create the University of the Future as part of its 5 year strategic plan. With around 28 000 students based across 3 campuses in and around Nottingham, the University offers the widest range of interventions to support the future employability of our graduates. Part of that mix of experience includes access to temporary or casual work, so we are launching this initiative to facilitate that process for our students. The Concept of a ‘NTU Agency’ NTU recognises that many of its students undertake casual or temporary work during their time at university both throughout the academic year and during holiday periods. Indeed the University itself employs hundreds of our own students in a range of casual jobs in its offices, in our coffee shops, in the Student Union, and as student ambassadors during open days and other large events. (In the last 12 months around 1 200 students and GBP 850k in salaries) These numbers are increasing, so is the ambition of the University and so is the expectation of student's that they will be able to find casual work whilst they study at university; so NTU would like to offer them a valued and high quality additional service. NTU is looking to identify an Employment Agency partner (the Agency) who could provide a service to students and the university and externally to local businesses who would value employing university students. We anticipate the Agency will operate separately of the University as a stand-alone business but very much as a close partner. Prior to entering into a formal tendering process, we are seeking options and opinions from prospective partners to enable us to identify and scope appropriate solutions. We would expect to have the Agency endorsed as an official partner of the University and Students Union. The Agency would have a physical presence at the university as well as online The proposal would be for all appropriate student casual work at NTU and NTSU to be delivered through the services of the Agency wherever possible The Agency would prioritise NTU students as candidates The Agency would also provide a commercial service to external organisations and businesses utilising NTU students as candidates The Agency would provide a full service offer including electronic timesheets and authorisations, as well as providing an efficient payroll service for this temporary labour The Agency would provide an advertising, matching and payroll service to NTU for casual workers but would not employ candidates on behalf of NTU as the intention is for NTU to employ them directly. We have an ambitious target to set up the Agency in January 2017 and this first stage consists of a market engagement exercise, including a supplier briefing event on 19th/20th September, to help shape that outcome.