“You can pick up the phone and have a chat with someone at HOPS and they normally have an answer for you as they’ve all worked there a long time. They know pretty much everything about recruitment and the relevant legislation.”
Jono Smales
P D Smales & Sons
Our independent auditor visits all farms wishing to place seasonal workers to assess that they are meeting the legislative requirements as well as our HOPS’ compliance checklist. These audits give farms detailed information on where they can make improvements and HOPS offers assistance to help them achieve these goals. We regularly audit all our existing farms too to ensure that they continue to meet their obligations as an employer of seasonal labour.
Overseas agents
We also annually audit our overseas agents who work on location in the countries we recruit from to ensure they are working to our best practice guidelines. All of our agents have a GLAA licence and are familiar with the farms in the UK. We also invite our growers over to visit the agents and countries where we recruit from so they can meet prospective teams and listen to the recruitment presentations.
HOPS is also one of the only seasonal labour providers who surveys seasonal workers on arrival in the UK. We do this to ensure they have been recruited correctly and have not made any unnecessary payments. These surveys are written in a worker’s first language and can be completed anonymously. We survey seasonal workers twice – through our farms and also online.
HOPS is a trusted industry partner and works with the NFU, the GLAA and Defra to give feedback on the sector. This helps ensure our growers’ concerns are heard by those responsible for leading change.
For more information on our Modern Slavery Statement, please see here.