We are delighted to announce a new partnership with award-winning legal experts WTT Consulting, whose insight will help redefine and elevate our workforce and IR35 compliance services.
Recognised by The Contracting Awards as Best Legal, Compliance or Tax Adviser, WTT Consulting holds a wealth of experience in the outsourcing field. They represent an approach unique within their industry, emphasising innovation, clarity, and openness. When the entire business world in the UK was going through a turbulent transition over the past few years, WTT was on the front lines of providing peace of mind and guidance, offering their expertise and insight to many organisations trying to find their new status quo.
Most notably for us, WTT is leading with a vision that reflected Referi’s own. Both organisations are defined by principles that centered around empowering clients, communicating with a clear image for the future, and establishing a culture of collaboration and complete transparency to ensure there are no surprises. It’s rare to find business partners with visions matching to this extent. So, when it came to complementing our IR35 Compliance & Workforce services, WTT was naturally our first choice as a collaborator; we couldn’t hope to find better partners.
The Way Things Are
While we hope the nature of our collaboration will touch on every aspect of our work, the driving factor behind the partnership was the new Off-Payroll rules introduced on 6 April 2021. Commonly known as IR35, these regulations impacted many companies getting outsource help, countless contractors providing their services through self-employment, and all the agencies and umbrella companies in between.
Flexibility in adapting to changing market conditions is crucial for every business trying to stay afloat in the competitive UK market. It is not easy to balance the ability to respond immediately to emerging requirements and kick off any project on a tight time-to-market deadline with maintaining a reasonable payroll that can keep the finances in the green. Until now, leveraging self-employed personnel was a critical tool in many organisations’ arsenal in striking this balance, but the recent developments have brought a myriad of new concerns.
Especially for established organisations who are held responsible if anything goes wrong, adapting to these new concerns have been easier said than done. They had to either lose their flexibility by getting all of their contributors within their payroll, or entirely change their way of working to be able to make use of outsourced help, which meant adjusting the organisational habits and restructuring the way tasks flow downwards. In some instances, this required changes in methodologies, tools and even hierarchies. Overall, the companies were left with many tough questions to answer and tough decisions to make just to try restrike this balance.
It is precisely this problem that we aim to tackle with our IR35 related services, which we’ll provide from this point onwards in collaboration with WTT. Thanks to the abundance of expertise WTT has on the matter, we will ease any anxieties you might have about the process and streamline the decisions through our services that go beyond just providing a workforce.
The Way We Do Things
Our vision has always been about redefining the common problems within the industry, approaching them from a wider perspective, and coming up with unique solutions that are holistic, cohesive, and easy to digest. We promise to walk together with our clients on every step of the journey of creating digital products. Upholding this vision for businesses who seek workforce help means relieving them of the entire burden of IR35 compliance.
What’s the entire burden? To put it simply, we won’t just leave you with resources to figure things out on your own. We will collaborate in each step, refine the business value needed, examine all the requirements, and chart out the project and the roadmap together. In each phase, we will detail each Statement of Work that actually reflects the work being done on your behalf. In each phase, we will find the right people and the right number of people. We will make sure they can integrate seamlessly into your flow so that they’re working efficiently and transparently.
As we will lead the way through an existing framework and a structured solution that is tailor-made for the problem at hand, you’ll enjoy the peace of mind of a process audited by experts without any additional pressure on your already existing processes and resources. Anytime you need additional consultancy and further clarity on the legal side of things, WTT will be positioned to provide it with a clear understanding of your specific circumstances.
The Shape Of Things To Come
No service you’re paying for should create more problems than it solves. We’re committed to define ours in a way that it adds the utmost value to your business in every case. The key to achieving that, we believe, are holistic services that come batteries included and that are compliant as is.
Once again, we’re thrilled about the future that this collaboration will bring. We’re confident that the partnership of these two organisations who put their clients first will shape the way outsourcing is done in the UK market. On the company’s announcement of the initiative on their website, WTT’s Managing Director Rhys Thomas has also expressed his confidence in the potential: “Refineri’s commitment to its clients is truly authentic and a large part of why the alignment between our two organisations will be such a success.”
