Sessions

Sessions offers a unique growth platform for original, global food brands. Since 2019, they have launched and scaled 12 food brands, partnered with more than 300 independent businesses and launched curated residencies in iconic venues such as Mikkeller Brewery and Roundhouse, and are the team, chefs and hands behind the iconic reimagined food hall in Brighton, Sessions @ Shelter Hall.

Business need

Kelly Davis, Head of People joined Sessions in 2022 and was keen to drive a more robust and streamlined onboarding process for new employees. Having used the service in previous roles, Kelly was already confident that TrustID’s Right to Work service could support the organisation’s onboarding and compliance checks and the integration into Teamtailor’s Applicant Tracking System (ATS) was an additional advantage.

“For me, the need to introduce technology was very much about visibility. I needed a straightforward way to ensure compliance across all of the locations in which our business operates. And the integration with Teamtailor was a huge bonus!” explains Kelly.

In June 2022, Sessions chose TrustID’s ‘Conditional’ Right to Work service which supports the full range of Right to Work checks, both within the Digital Scheme and for employees who don’t have digital ‘eligibility’.

End-to-end visibility

As a fast-growing and seasonal recruiter, Sessions manage candidate applications using Teamtailor ATS and they were keen to find a Right to Work service which could be launched as part of an applicant’s onboarding journey through the ATS service. “We benefit from Teamtailor’s ATS service for our application process – we love their technology – and the seamless integration which they have with TrustID means we can now manage everything through a single interface” says Kelly. This joined up process gives the Sessions talent team complete visibility of recruitment across their multi-site business and means no employee can be onboarded until the ‘Right to Work’ stage of the application process is complete.

Save time and money

Without a digital onboarding checking service, the team at Sessions were relying on people managers to make manual checks at each location and share information with a central HR team. This could cause significant delays “Where we didn’t have a digital onboarding and compliance process before, we couldn’t 100% guarantee that an employee’s Right to Work check was completed on time” explains Kelly. The TrustID service allows candidates to remotely upload their relevant Right to Work documents as part of their application process. This straightforward process saves time for both the Sessions team and their candidates. The technology has also eliminated the need for extensive Right to Work training within the HR team or an HR resource to spend all of their time manually checking documents or verifying that the onboarding process has been completed correctly.

Reputation

As a customer-facing hospitality brand, reputation is crucial for Sessions. Having seen examples of companies hitting the press for being audited by immigration enforcement and found to be breaching Right to Work guidance, they were keen to protect their brand from illegal working. What’s more, they knew that a positive onboarding experience would give an applicant confidence when joining their organisation.

Kelly adds “We were keen to protect our brand from reputational damage. But as well as that, we know that using the right technology gives our employees a smooth, professional onboarding and compliance process and really set the positive tone for how well we’ll look after them.”

Ease of use

Today, the Sessions team simply email applicants a one-time link to the TrustID service when they reach the relevant onboarding stage within Teamtailor. The customised link asks the applicant to upload an image of their relevant RtW documents and a selfie image. “The checks are super easy to do” says Kelly. “The candidate does most of the ‘hard work’ by capturing the images themselves, guided by the service”. The TrustID service validates the documents submitted and assesses the holder’s eligibility to work in the UK, returning a clear validation report to Teamtailor within minutes.

In summary

The investment in technology from TrustID and Teamtailor has created a smooth, straightforward and compliant onboarding service for Sessions. Kelly reflects “For us, it was about balancing compliance and risk. We wanted to make the process as easy as possible for our talent team and our employees and when we balanced the investment vs the potential risk, the service was a ‘no-brainer’.”