What does it really cost to recruit migrant workers?
The recruitment process for migrant workers might seem straightforward—processing fees, travel costs, or training. But hidden beneath these are often overlooked costs that can potentially exploit workers’ rights, affect budgets, and expose businesses to legal complications. How can companies ensure up-to-date information on recruitment related costs while ensuring legal and ethical recruitment processes?
Verité’s Recruitment Cost Calculator (RCC), developed with support from the Walmart Foundation, is a web- based calculator tool, designed to provide businesses with a clear breakdown of costs by region, sector, and method of recruitment.
Route to Recruitment Responsibility
The RCC organizes data according to industry and migration routes.
The tool empowers companies to properly adopt the Employer Pays Principle (EPP), a key guideline on Recruitment Fees and Related Costs established by the International Labor Organization (ILO), ensuring that the costs of recruitment are not passed onto the workers themselves; and protects businesses from the legal risks associated with worker-paid recruitment fees.
Risks Reduced, Rights Restored
Through utilizing the RCC, businesses and companies compare recruitment costs against reliable region-specific data, allowing them to match their practices with actual market rates and avoid inflated charges from labor intermediaries.
Businesses can also use the RCC’s detailed information on which costs employers are legally required to cover under national laws to their advantage, reducing their exposure to legal issues and reputational risks.
Companies can further monitor contracts and scrutinize supplier practices, as well as evaluate if their labor providers are engaged in ethical practices and if correct resources are being used for fair recruitment.
Raising the Bar on Responsible Hiring
In verifying their ethical recruitment processes with the RCC, companies can demonstrate their commitment to fair hiring and workers’ rights, protecting workers from being unfairly charged and setting strong examples in the industry through promoting the EPP.
Using the tool equips companies with the tools needed to fully understand recruitment costs, manage risks, and promote fair labor practices, leading the way in ethical recruitment across their supply chains.
A Recruitment Revolution
As companies strive to operate responsibly, the need for clarity and transparency grows more and more imperative. This aligns with Verité’s advocacy of helping businesses operate responsibly and ethically, improving labor practices, and boosting social responsibility.
In utilizing tools like the RCC, businesses around the world can position themselves as leaders in responsible and transparent hiring and recruitment processes—a vital step towards a fairer, more ethical global labor market for all.
For more information on the Recruitment Cost Calculator or how Verité can support responsible recruitment and hiring for your company, contact verite@verite.org
