New legal tech solution developed by Noerr ensures legally compliant deployment of external staff
Noerr has created a new legal tech solution that provides companies with relief when it comes to engaging and deploying external staff. The Noerr Contractor Compliance Check integrates all processes necessary for the efficient and legally compliant procurement of external staff on one platform.
“Engaging and deploying external staff is legally complex and frequently presents companies with new, unexpected challenges in practice,” says Noerr partner Daniel Happ, who developed the tool together with Noerr’s Digital Innovation Hub. In fact, using external staff wrongfully can have serious legal consequences. Authorities have often been seen to classify the deployment of external staff as unlawful. Not only can this lead to employment relationships between the external staff and the company engaging the external staff with sometimes dramatic consequences under tax and social insurance law, in addition to risks of criminal liability and loss of reputation, but there is also the risk for the company engaging the external staff of additional payments and fines as well as personal liability for the responsible persons in the company.
“There is therefore a great need for companies to have state-of-the-art tools at hand to ensure the systemic legal conformity of deploying external staff in the company organisation,” emphasises Daniel Happ. Using the Contractor Compliance Check, companies can check the deployment of external staff for legal compliance at any time 24/7, by automated means and including all stakeholders concerned in the individual case, using minimum staff resources. The tool will always take into account the latest legislative developments and ensure that each individual step in the procurement process is carried out in accordance with these.
Intelligent real-time dialogue
This is made possible by an intelligent real-time dialogue – the core feature of the Contractor Compliance Check – in which all the necessary information is automatically requested. “This allows users to handle the tool even without any training,” Happ points out. The user’s entries are processed automatically in real time and the legally compliant assessment of the planned deployment of external staff is therefore available immediately – in a user-friendly ‘traffic light’ format.
“When used in standard situations, the proportion of cases flagged with a yellow traffic light is below ten per cent,” Daniel Happ emphasises. The Contractor Compliance Check thus offers a particularly high level of legal certainty – also in comparison with other products. A second check by the company’s legal or compliance department or by external lawyers will only be necessary in few cases.
Integration of all company departments
What also makes Noerr’s Contractor Compliance Check unique is its fully integrating approach: All stakeholders involved in the organisation of deploying external staff are connected with each other depending on the specific requirements of the individual case. This includes, in addition to the company’s operational unit as the party engaging the external staff, in particular also the procurement department, the legal department and the compliance department and, as the case may be, the human resources department. “While all departments are involved, they will – in the interest of maximum efficiency –only have to take action if this is necessary in the case at hand,” says Daniel Happ. “All the necessary information is immediately available on the platform in a clear and audit-proof format.”
Automated contract generation and documentation
Once all the data has been entered and the program gives the green light, the company can go ahead with engaging the external staff. The Contractor Compliance Check takes into account all forms of external staff deployment, including the engagement of crowdworkers. The program automatically generates the required contract documents, thus relieving the legal department and saving valuable time.
In addition, the Noerr Contractor Compliance Check seamlessly documents all initiated processes and provides the compliance department with comprehensive analysis options and recommendations for action in order to identify legal risks more quickly than before and to counteract them preventively. “If used correctly, the Noerr Contractor Compliance Check is a powerful compliance tool that takes into account all aspects of deploying external staff – from legally compliant procurement to complete documentation and ongoing analysis of the deployment of external staff,” states Daniel Happ.
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