Contracting Crew Seminar

On Tuesday 5^th March, Sargent-Disc held a contracting crew seminar in association with the Production Guild of Great Britain at the Southbank Centre. Chaired by Dr. Laurence Sargent, Director of Sargent-Disc, the panel shed light on the importance of contracting efficiently with a focus on the benefits of using digital systems in place of paper processes. The panel included:

–          Dr. Laurence Sargent, Director, Sargent-Disc [Chair]

–          Seth Roe, Senior Associate, Wiggin LLP

–          Rebecca MacLeod, Assistant Production Office Coordinator

–          Alasdair Wilson, Product Manager, Sargent-Disc

The Importance of Contracting:

Seth began by sharing the invaluable benefits of contracting crew correctly – including the significance of signatures and timestamps in reducing employment disputes in the workplace.

Seth also ran through essential contracting clauses including the differences between employing crew as direct hires or contracting them as loan outs. For example, it can often be simpler to employ crew as direct hires, but this comes with compliance risks related to holiday pay and pensions.

Online vs paper contracting processes:

Addressing the problems of paper-based contracting processes, Rebecca explained how the entire process of creating, issuing and approving paper documents is very time consuming for production. She described how CrewStart™, Sargent-Disc’s digital onboarding system, has simplified the entire process for her, saving a huge amount of time.

Despite some effort required in the beginning to learn how to use the system, Rebecca assured the audience that investing the time was worth it – the ability to export the delivery bundle containing all fully executed crew contracts with the single click of a button has made the whole process a lot more efficient, saving days of work.

CrewStart™ Demonstration:

The seminar concluded with Alasdair Wilson demonstrating CrewStart™ with a particular emphasis on the timecard process. For more information about the application or to book a demo please contact us at info@sargent-disc.com.