HR Consultancy vs Recruitment Brokerage

An anonymized founder wanted to operate in the HR sector and needed to understand whether advisory work and labour recruitment could be placed under one activity.

The source material draws a sharp boundary. Human Resources Consultancies 7020008 covers diagnosing employee/workforce problems, reports, advice, professional programs and training recommendations, but expressly does not allow labour recruitment or employment brokerage.

The investigation treated the business model as a choice of regulated function rather than a branding decision: advisory-only work follows the HR consultancy route; manpower sourcing requires the recruitment-brokerage route and its own compliance obligations.

Two activities can sound commercially related while being legally different businesses. We use the operating workflow — not the company’s marketing title — to determine what must be licensed.