Policies

How to complain, how we guard against bias, what we do about modern slavery risk, and who we won’t approach. Short, and written to be read rather than filed.

1. Complaints procedure

If you’re unhappy with anything we’ve done — how we approached you, how we handled your application, something we said or something we didn’t — we want to hear about it. We’d rather fix it than have you tell someone else.

What happens next

• We’ll acknowledge it within two working days
• Tony Goodwin will look into it personally and respond in full within ten working days. If it’s going to take longer, we’ll tell you why and when to expect an answer
• We’ll tell you what we found, what we’re doing about it, and what we’re changing so it doesn’t happen again
• If you’re not satisfied with the outcome, say so and we’ll review it again

If we can’t resolve it

You can escalate a complaint about our conduct as an employment agency to the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate at the Department for Business and Trade — gov.uk or 020 7215 5000.

For anything about how we’ve handled your personal information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk or 0303 123 1113. We’d ask you to come to us first, but you don’t have to.

2. Equality, diversity and inclusion

We work on roles where getting the hire right matters more than anything else. The only way to do that reliably is to assess people on evidence of what they’ve done, and nothing else.

What we commit to

• Criteria come from the role, never from the person. Every score in a suitability report is against something the job actually requires, agreed with the client before we approach anybody.
• We don’t search on protected characteristics. Our research matches job titles, employers, sector, seniority, location and length of experience. Age, sex, ethnicity, disability, religion, sexual orientation, marital or pregnancy status play no part in it. See our AI notice for the detail.
• Every exclusion is a human decision. Nobody is removed from consideration by software, and anyone who is excluded, is excluded by a person who can explain why.
• We write down what we couldn’t establish. The Watch Points section of every report exists so a hiring decision rests on evidence rather than impression — which is also the best protection against bias creeping in.
• Adjustments are available and free. If you need anything done differently at any stage — the format of a conversation, extra time, written questions in advance — tell us and we’ll arrange it. You don’t have to explain why.

If a client asks us for something discriminatory

We say no.

Occasionally a brief arrives with something in it that isn’t lawful — an age range, a preference framed as “cultural fit”, an assumption about someone’s circumstances. Most of the time it isn’t deliberate. We’ll raise it, explain why we can’t work to it, and offer a lawful way to get at what they’re actually worried about. If a client insists, we decline the assignment.

We act as an employment agency under the Equality Act 2010 and take that responsibility seriously, both for candidates and for the clients we’d be exposing.

Our own hiring

The same standard applies to us. We recruit and work with people on merit, and we won’t discriminate on any protected characteristic.

3. Modern slavery and human trafficking

This statement is voluntary. Growth Partner Pro Ltd is below the £36 million turnover threshold at which a statement is required under section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. We publish one because we place people for a living, and that puts us closer to the risk than most businesses of our size.

Our business and where the risk sits

We place permanent commercial and operational staff with UK, US and Australian businesses. We don’t supply temporary or agency labour, we don’t operate in high-risk sectors for forced labour such as agriculture, construction labour supply or hand car washes, and we don’t use intermediaries or labour providers between us and the people we place.

We assess our own risk as low. That isn’t a reason to do nothing.

What we do

• We deal with candidates directly. Every person we put forward has been spoken to individually by someone here. We don’t take candidates from third-party suppliers or labour providers.
• We check right to work before any placement is confirmed, using original documents or the Home Office online service.
• We never charge candidates a fee. Not for registration, not for introductions, not for anything. Charging work-seekers is both unlawful and one of the clearest markers of exploitation.
• We watch for the signs. Someone else controlling a candidate’s communication, wages paid into an account that isn’t theirs, documents held by a third party, reluctance to speak alone, or a “representative” answering on their behalf. Anyone screening for us knows to stop and escalate.
• We check who we’re working with. Clients are verified as real, trading businesses before we take an assignment.

If we found something

We’d stop the placement immediately, make sure the person was safe, and report it — to the Modern Slavery Helpline on 08000 121 700, to the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority where it applied, and to the police where there was immediate risk. We wouldn’t continue with the client concerned.

This statement is reviewed annually and was approved by Tony Goodwin, Director, on behalf of Growth Partner Pro Ltd.

4. Off-limits undertaking

Our business depends on people trusting us in markets that are often small. So:

• We don’t approach anyone working for a client of ours while they are a client and for twelve months afterwards.
• We don’t approach anyone we’ve placed for the duration of their employment with that client.
• We don’t use one client’s information to serve another. Briefs, market research and anything else you tell us stays with the assignment it was given for.

These undertakings are written into our terms of business.

5. Contact

Anything on this page: [email protected], or Talent Architects, 11 Middlethorpe Business Park, York, YO23 2BD.

Talent Architects is a trading name of Growth Partner Pro Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15650672. Registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office, reference ZC218639. In the United Kingdom we act as an employment agency in relation to permanent appointments, as defined by the Employment Agencies Act 1973 and the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003.