In this edition of DCD>Talks, which was recorded live at our DCD>Connect event in London, Georgia Butler talks to Paul Glover of Working Away from Home about how agencies like his can take the hassle out of finding skilled workers in a new location, and making sure that they’re happy, healthy and giving their best.

As Glover explains: “It can be quite daunting to find a property when working away, where you have to sign into utilities or find furniture, and deal with all the tenancy agreements. We take all that stress and anxiety away from those people as a proactive service. We offer things like a tendering service to clients, so if a client is looking to tender for new projects here in Frankfurt, as a location where we've got existing employees, we can just plug into that market and offer prices, rates, and availability.

On the other side, there aren't any surprises for clients in terms of accommodation prices, and so on. Ultimately, we look to relieve all the anxiety and stress, and the time-consuming element of it is a big part of our services. Time is money.”

If there was any doubt about the demand for the services of a business like this, you only have to look at its continual growth across new territories as a testament that the need is most definitely there: “We have expanded across Europe. We are now turning revenue in North America, and we're starting to look at a few bits in the UAE territories.

“To facilitate that growth from our side, we've invested in a back office team, dealing with all kinds of maintenance issues and payments. We've expanded and invested in headcount from that perspective, We invested in an online portal, which will make things a lot better for clients, they're going to be able to log in at any point now and look at all of their bookings from a cost perspective, from an invoicing perspective, and we can manage the internal workflow a lot better as well.”

Glover tells us a little bit about what he and his team offer: “We know this project is coming up, and we can travel to that location, we can network with local property investors and local agents, and we effectively build up a database of properties. In terms of the way that we have built solutions, in the past, it could be difficult because you can have a small town of, say, 5000 people, and have 2000 people descended upon it. It creates real logistical difficulty in finding a solution but that's exactly what we have to do; we have to create a solution.”

He also reminds us that simply finding staff isn’t enough. If you want them to come to a new town or even a new country, you need to make them comfortable and want to stay the course. That increases the burden on the employer to take care of their whole life, not just their job. Adding a specialist agency can take away this challenge.

“You've certainly got employers out there who focus on employee welfare. Unfortunately, you have others that don't. In the data center industry, we have people who travel abroad to work, and unfortunately for those people, accommodation budgets can get squeezed. It's largely because there's been a lack of research from companies before winning the contract about prices, and availability.”

If you’d like to learn more about how a specialist staffing agency like workingawayfromhome.com can give you peace of mind from the skills shortage as you expand your horizons, listen to the whole DCD>Talk here.