Fictional client
Wrenmark paid every one of those workers. It invoiced every one of those shifts. Then client audits found the gaps and £81,000 was credited back — work done, wages paid, nothing recovered. Nobody in the compliance team was careless. They are tracking 1,840 workers and eleven document types across two desks on a spreadsheet that only tells the truth on the morning somebody opens it. Staffing is a business where the software either knows what expired overnight, or you find out from the client.
Wrenmark Staffing does not exist. We cannot show live client systems, so this study is built around a fictional agency — invented firm, invented workers, invented clients, invented figures. What is not invented is the work: the compliance regime, the audit mechanics, the fill race and the failure modes are all real, and the screens are genuine working pages rather than pictures of pages. Every mockup on this page opens and responds to clicks.
On scope: Wrenmark supplies temporary workers to healthcare and construction in the UK, which is where the compliance burden lives. A permanent-placement agency has a different business and would need a different system. Client compliance standards and framework requirements vary by client and change over time — in a real build these are configuration, not code.
Wrenmark supplies nurses, healthcare assistants, allied health staff, trades and labourers across the West Midlands. Twenty-two consultants, six people in compliance, 1,840 workers on the register and 2,180 shifts filled in an average week. What it sells is not people — it is the guarantee that the person turning up is allowed to be there.
Staffing has two clocks running at once: the compliance clock, which decides whether you can supply at all, and the fill clock, which decides whether you get asked again. Wrenmark is losing on both.
Two halves, and they are the same data used twice. Every worker has a binding expiry — the earliest live date across their whole file — and nothing can be booked past it without a named person overriding it and saying why. That single derived field is what turns eleven spreadsheet columns into a system.
The same file then powers the fill. Getting from 1,840 workers to the eighteen who are qualified, compliant for that client, available, in range and not opted out is a query, not an afternoon — and once you have the eighteen, you offer them all at once rather than ringing them in whatever order comes to mind.
Seven screens follow. Each one opens as a real page — click through them.
Where the register actually stands: 1,840 workers split by whether they can legally be placed today, what expires in the next thirty days sorted by renewal lead time rather than a fixed window, and a twelve-month line of shifts credited after client audits.
Then the row that matters most — the forty-one shifts already in the diary for dates when the worker will not be placeable.
The screen this study is built around. Eleven documents on one nurse’s file, ten of them fine. Her professional registration expires on 3 September and from that morning she cannot be placed on any shift, for any client, at any rate.
It is not a sequence like a consultation or a mortgage offer — it is eleven parallel clocks where the earliest one governs everything. And it carries the consequence: fourteen shifts already booked past that date, worth £2,772, six of them inside the client’s cancellation window.
A ward that needs a nurse for tonight sends the same request to four agencies. It is not a tender, it is a race, and it is over in under an hour. Wrenmark takes two hours and twelve minutes to come back with a name.
The screen shows where those minutes go, and that a hundred of them are a person doing what a filter and a broadcast could do: 1,120 workers down to the eighteen who are qualified, compliant for that client, available, in range and not opted out — then offered simultaneously rather than rung one at a time.
Six clients and six different definitions of compliant. The same worker is fully cleared for one and two documents short for the next, because a framework asks for things a care home does not.
Which produces the table nobody has ever run: how many more workers would qualify for each client per document added. £292,900 of margin sits behind five training courses.
1,104 registered workers who have not worked in ninety days, 284 of them still fully compliant and able to work tomorrow. And 318 who completed an onboarding process and were never once called.
The re-engagement sequence is three messages and a call, then the worker is rested for six months — because an agency that texts dormant workers weekly is not re-engaging them, it is training them to ignore it.
Wrenmark pays its workers on Wednesday whether the client has approved the timesheet or not. That is the deal that keeps good workers, and it means every unapproved shift is money out of the door against an invoice that may never be raised.
Alongside it, margin by client — and the fact that fifty-five per cent of the volume sits at the lowest rate. Defensible as a decision; less so as something nobody had seen.
The third audience, and the one holding a phone at a bus stop. Shifts booked and shifts offered, documents with the dates that matter, availability in one tap, and pay history.
Crucially it tells Grace about her own expiry in plain English — what runs out, when, what it stops her doing, and how long renewing takes. The agency’s compliance problem is mostly a worker communication problem wearing a different hat.
Four phases of two weeks each — eight weeks end to end. The worker file and the binding date go first, because the fill board, the client gap analysis and the pay exceptions are all the same data seen from different angles. Each phase ends with something the team actually uses, not a demo.
Weeks 1–2.
Weeks 3–4.
Weeks 5–6.
Weeks 7–8.
Eight weeks is possible because most of it already exists. The worker and client records, document handling, expiry tracking, escalation rules, the SMS engagement engine and the portal are running in production across six sectors already. What actually gets built for a staffing agency is the sector core: the per-client compliance standards, the binding-date logic that stops a booking, and the eligibility filter behind the fill board. That is the part this study is about, and it is the part we would spend the eight weeks getting right.
This took a fictional agency and made its process visible. The same exercise works better with a real one. Tell us how your business actually runs and we will build a working mockup of it — your desks, your standards, your brand — before anybody commits to a build.
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