Your suppliers are deploying workers you've never classified.
Every service contract is a potential classification exposure. That 'managed service' might include individuals working under your direction. That consultancy engagement might be disguised staff augmentation. Procurement manages the contracts but when regulators investigate, they follow the supply chain straight to you.
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The Supply Chain Blind Spot
Service contracts aren't just services.
Procurement handles supplier relationships, statements of work, and commercial terms. But behind every service contract, there are people doing work. And when those people are working under your organisation's direction and control, regardless of what the contract says, classification rules apply.
The patterns we see:
- SOWs written with day rates instead of deliverables, that's not a service, that's labour
- "Consultants" who've been on the same project for three years
- Suppliers four levels deep in the chain, with contractors you've never assessed
- Workers onboarded to your systems, following your processes, attending your meetings
Why Procurement Can't Ignore Worker Classification
| Risk | Impact |
|---|---|
| Supply Chain Liability | When a supplier misclassifies workers, the liability flows up the chain. Their problem becomes your problem and their non-compliance becomes your fine. |
| Contract vs. Reality Gap | Regulators don't care what the contract says. They care about working practice. If there's a gap, they'll find it and penalties start at the point of divergence. |
| Supplier Concentration Risk | If a key supplier is found non-compliant, you lose access to critical resource. The operational disruption can exceed the financial penalty. |
| Threshold Blindness | Contracts under procurement thresholds (often £10-25k) bypass governance entirely. But a £15k engagement repeated quarterly is £60k of unclassified exposure. |
"We've got a mixture of contracts... gangs of workers, consultants. The challenge is identifying. Are you picking up all of the labour contracts? It looks like a service contract, but actually it's bums on seats."
Follow the Labour, Not Just the Contract
CoComply analyses your supplier relationships to identify where labour is being supplied, regardless of how contracts are structured. We surface the workers behind service agreements, assess their working arrangements, and flag where contract terms don't match operational reality.
The result: procurement can manage supplier relationships with confidence, knowing that classification exposure has been identified and addressed.
What Procurement Leaders Get from CoComply
2 documents uploaded
Analysing...Contract & SOW Analysis
Find the Labour Hidden in Services
Examine contracts classified as 'services' to identify hidden labour. Flag statements of work that look like disguised staff augmentation, day rates without deliverables, time-based billing, open-ended engagements.
What Changes
You see the labour in your services. No more assuming "managed service" means no classification exposure.
You can challenge suppliers with data. When an SOW looks like staff aug, you have the evidence to renegotiate.
You protect operational continuity. By addressing supplier compliance proactively, you avoid the disruption of emergency remediation.
Sometimes it will be call-off contracts, there'll be a contract for services, absolutely contract for services, and suddenly you bring in a person under that contract on a secondment or something. Unless you are spotting... you're not necessarily going to spot every single instance.