How Equitas scaled from 20 to 200+ weekly placements without more staff

Equitas Staffing, a UK-based education recruitment agency, scaled their business 10x in 15 months without hiring more administrative staff by implementing Access Vincere Evo and Onboarded. The integrated recruitment platform eliminated manual compliance tracking, automated timesheet approvals, and removed weekly payroll crises, allowing the agency to avoid hiring 4 additional back-office employees and redirect £100-140K in potential overhead costs toward revenue generation instead.

Medium (15-50) UK & EMEA

Posted 19/12/2025

Equitas Staffing scaled their education recruitment business 10x without hiring more administrative staff

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  • Company size: 10-50 employees
  • Headquarters: United Kingdom & Dubai
  • Industry: Education Recruitment
  • Specialties: Primary, secondary, and SEN school placements
  • Website: https://equitasstaffing.com 

Equitas Staffing is a specialist UK-based education recruitment agency. After implementing Access Vincere Evo and Onboarded, they achieved 10x growth - from 20 to 200+ weekly placements - without hiring 4 additional administrative staff and avoiding 50% headcount expansion. . The integrated platform eliminated weekly payroll crises, reduced compliance verification steps by 66-75%, and freed the team to invest £100-140K in potential overhead savings back into revenue generation. Christian Walshe, Managing Director, led the transformation that turned underutilised technology into operational infrastructure capable of supporting rapid scale. 

The challenge: Growth without infrastructure 

Equitas' recruitment team was scaling rapidly - from around 20 workers placed weekly to between 200 and 300 - but their operational systems hadn't evolved to match. Excel spreadsheets tracked compliance, creating high risk of human error and requiring triple and quadruple manual checking. Email-based timesheet approvals turned every Wednesday into a payroll crisis, with multiple outstanding timesheets, delayed candidate payments, and complaints escalating to senior leadership. 

We were using Excel spreadsheets to monitor things... We're now into 200+ workers. We needed to track our compliance better. We needed to make sure we're keeping an eye on who was going out on what stage. The breaking point was clear: "We could handle compliance on an Excel spreadsheet until we couldn't. We could handle timesheets being done via email... until we couldn't.  

said Christian Walshe, Managing Director. 

The solution: Optimising Access Vincere Evo and building an integrated stack 

Rather than switching providers, a pivotal conversation with their Account Manager revealed the real problem: the team wasn't using Vincere properly. After systematically identifying unused features and inactive workflow Equitas doubled down on Access Vincere and extended their tech stack with the addition of Onboarded and TimeTemp to create an end-to-end platform. 

The integration with Xero accounting, already in use at Equitas, made the decision even easier. Christian led the transformation with support from the Access implementation team. 

What they showed me is that my team were not fully utilising the system. My team were not actually doing what they should be with it, they were... misusing Access Vincere Evo and now when they are using it for what it's needed, it's actually become a very vital tool. 

Key implementations included: 

  • Access Vincere Evo (CRM): Reactivated critical features and retrained the team on their education-specific workflows
  • Onboarded (Compliance Management): Replaced spreadsheets with integrated ID and DBS checks and automated compliance stage tracking
  • TimeTemp (Timesheet Management): Digitised approvals with centralised audit trails and Xero integration 

The results: 10x growth with zero back-office expansion 

Within 15 months, the impact of the integrated Access stack was clear and measurable: 

  • 4 admin FTEs avoided (£100-140K annual overhead): "We don't now need to go and find 4 salaries. It allows us now to invest the money back into the billing side." Specifically avoided: 1 timesheet processor, 1 invoice checker, and 2 compliance specialists.
  • 90%+ Reduction in Payroll issues: "Wednesday is our payroll day. Every week there were multiple outstanding timesheets... Literally, it'd be one candidate, forgot to do their own timesheet."
  • 66-75% fewer compliance verification steps: Automated ID and DBS checks eliminated triple and quadruple manual checking: "We were using extra man hours, triple, quadruple checking things that now we don't need to do."
  • 10x Increase in eeekly placements: Weekly placements grew from ~20 workers to 200+, with the new tech significantly expanding operational capacity without proportional overhead increase.
  • Competitive positioning with larger agencies: "Every other agency in the world will offer online timesheet approvals. So if you're not offering that, you look miles behind... it allows us to at least be in the same pond as the big boys."
  • Platform ready to scale: "As we want to grow, there's a feature there to help us to grow… it's almost like as we're growing... to next level on the game you can have this now."
  • Strategic resource reallocation: Freed resources from elimination of manual tasks enabled focus on billing and revenue generation rather than administrative firefighting.
  • Immediate recommendation: When Equitas' venture capitalist investors acquired another business: "The first thing I recommended when I sat with their MD was Access Vincere Evo." 

 

I think the CRM for any business has got to suit the business needs. And Access Vincere Evo suits what we're trying to do. It suits what I'm trying to grow and that's great.

said Christian, the Managing Director 

 

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