Jan-Willem Naerebout speaks for all of us when he says: “The confusion around Brexit is enormous.” Yet he stands apart in that, while much of Britain feels on pause, he is busy starting up a new recruitment business, Agri-HR. In the midst of one of Britain’s biggest political upheavals in history, his timing is undoubtedly curious, but Naerebout is applying an entrepreneurial eye to the matter.
Supply and demand is an axiom even Brexit cannot mute, and for Naerebout, the growing battle in agriculture to recruit seasonal workers is an opportunity to provide a service he felt he could excel in. After several years working as group operations director for S&A Produce, where one of his main responsibilities was recruitment, he felt the time was right to begin a new venture.
“With the experience [at S&A] the opportunity came to do something for myself, and while everyone is quite doom and gloom about Brexit, actually I see a couple of opportunities in that,” says Naerebout. “Customers are anecdotally reporting 10 to 20 per cent of their labour being short, which sort of translates into anywhere between 6,000 to 12,000 people. There’s definitely the demand there, and with my experience gained in recruitment, marketing, getting to the right people, the combination of the two was where the idea was born.”
Neither is Naerebout afraid of the established players in the market that he will be competing against, such as Concordia or Hops Labour Solutions. “In a way I don’t see myself as competing because there is a shortage anyway, and there are no real entries into the recruitment market. If I’m filling a shortfall then I’m not competing against those players as such; I’m just providing a service to minimise those shortfalls.”
So why doesn’t Naerebout see the same sheer calamity that adorns the front pages of the press each day, especially to be feared in the event of a no-deal Brexit? “Don’t get me wrong, I think a no-deal is significant in other aspects of produce,” he says, “like transport, imports of goods, and plant material grown abroad. But from a purely ‘people’ point of view the important message is that it’s business as usual.”
It’s a point Naerebout is bound to stress to the media and to the industry as confusion reigns on the future of EU worker rights. To be fair, the Home Office has been as clear on the matter as the Channel waters, with immigration minister Caroline Nokes giving conflicting statements to her boss Sajid Javid over what will happen to EU immigrant applications after a no-deal Brexit. She told a select committee in October that EU citizens would face the same barriers to entry as non-EU entrants, sparking panic across industries like agriculture. It forced Javid to rebuff her claim, admitting that EU workers will still effectively have the right to work, as the government won’t have the capacity to distinguish between EU citizens working prior to the withdrawal date.
“I’ve been meeting quite a few growers over the past two weeks, potentially new customers,” recalls Naerebout, “and the confusion around Brexit is enormous. There are growers who say beyond 29 March they won’t be able to get any more people and they are having sleepless nights over it, and it’s not true. At the moment the priority for all recruitment businesses is that it is business as usual.”
For Naerebout, business as usual now consists of rolling out his business model, which he says offers two core benefits to customers. “Our point of difference is the website, which is unique, and the other part is that Agri-HR deals directly with the worker. We’re not talking about a supply chain of recruitment agencies, we’re a really simple direct line to the worker and I deal directly with customers, and in that context the chain is really simple and short and with that, very agile.”
Naerebout says that one of his core offerings is the ability to provide tailored and comprehensive scheduling of workers, depending on their needs. “I see an opportunity for longer employment, starting on a salad farm in Cornwall, for example, and ending up picking apples in Kent, or blueberries in Scotland at the end of the year. In that time they may have two to three employment opportunities on different products in different seasons.
“Some workers want to work only a short period of time, others maybe the whole year – matching those two may provide a really good service for the customers and the workers.”
While horticulture has suffered from circumstances outside of its control, it has arguably not done enough to promote itself to seasonal workers. Naerebout says the industry has to get better at marketing itself, and putting out a consistent message to workers abroad on their ability to work in the UK.
“At the moment I’m quite worried by the misinformation that is going about. Having a strong marketing message is important to make sure the industry has sufficient people. Even within the industry people are not clear what’s going to happen. If people think they aren’t going to come to the UK because it’s not open, then we are shooting ourselves in the foot. The government needs to provide clarity as well.”
Beyond that, however, he says Britain has a good story to tell, with ample opportunities to attract more labour going forward. “The UK has had an enormous hike in the Living Wage. It’s been a huge upside in comparison to continental Europe. Even if you take the exchange rate into account, the growth of pay has gone faster than any other EU country.
“A lot of UK businesses work with incentive bonuses. In soft fruit you get productivity bonuses, and there are team bonuses in the veg industry. The seasonal pay in agriculture is excellent in comparison to other countries so it’s about making that point to the workers, as well as safe working environments and accommodation standards like those recently introduced by the FPC, which are excellent. Earning well in a safe environment still makes the UK an attractive place.”
For that reason, Naerebout is planning for the long term and envisions his company spreading into other sectors such as hospitality, transport and even healthcare – all sectors suffering from labour shortfalls. In the future, Naerebout concedes that he may well find his real competitors aren’t even human.
“That’s exactly the reason to expand out into different sectors, hospitality being one. You look at Alton Towers, for example, how many people they employ, and that’s something they wouldn’t be able to automate.”
