One platform for all your agency recruitment.
Manage your entire permanent and locum agency supply chain from a single online portal.
Recruitment, simplified.
A managed service (sometimes called a VMS, or vendor management system) is a single online platform for running your recruitment supply chain — your agency relationships, your internal staff banks, your direct contractor pools, all in one place.
Instead of dealing with each agency separately — separate rates, separate terms, separate invoices, separate compliance checks — you manage all of them through one platform. You post a vacancy once; the platform sends it out to your agencies in a defined order; candidates come back through the platform for review; timesheets and invoices are generated and consolidated automatically.
Ember VMS handles both permanent and locum recruitment through the same platform. Most competitors in this space came out of NHS Trust temporary staffing and never built proper permanent hiring functionality — Ember was designed from the start to do both equally well.
In practice, the platform gives you:
Ember VMS is built specifically for UK healthcare. It brings your existing agency relationships onto the platform — you don't lose any of them.
Three tiers. One platform.
Start free at the entry tier. Add internal supply or embedded functions when you need them. The platform itself is the same at every tier — what changes is what you bring through it.
What each tier adds
Agency Management
Manage your entire agency supply chain in one place.
- Permanent and locum agency recruitment
- Schedule and manage candidate interviews within the platform
- Tiered PSL (preferred supplier list — your agency suppliers grouped into priority tiers) with automatic cascading
- Standardised rates and terms across all agencies
- Customisable compliance requirements per role
- Digital timesheets with audited approvals
- Consolidated weekly invoicing
- Custom reports for any stakeholder, configured to your needs
- IR35-compatible engagement options (handling tax-status compliance for self-employed contractors)
Free to clients. Agencies pay a small platform fee.
Internal Workforce
Combine your internal banks and direct contractor pools with your agency supply chain.
- Everything in Basic
- Optional bank and direct locum integration
- Cascade jobs to internal staff before agency suppliers
- Single workflow for internal and external supply
- Unified reporting across all hiring sources
- Internal bank management tools
Configured to your group's scale.
Embedded Functions
Add dedicated platform-embedded functions to extend your team.
- Everything in Plus
- Dedicated in-house recruiter function
- Dedicated compliance officer function
- Dedicated administrator function
- Scaled to your group's size and requirements
- Functions work natively within Ember VMS
Configured per client.
Plus and Bespoke pricing is configured to your group's size and requirements. Get in touch for a quote.
Book a discovery callOne portal. One point of contact. One consolidated invoice.
Post a vacancy
Vacancy posted in Ember VMS cascades automatically to your tiered preferred supplier list (your agency suppliers grouped into priority tiers).
Manage candidates
Candidate submissions, interviews, bookings, and compliance all happen within the platform.
One invoice
Timesheets, approvals, and self-bill invoicing (we generate the agency's invoice on their behalf, so they don't need to chase you) are consolidated. One invoice per period, full audit trail.
Built to fit your operation.
Ember VMS is configurable to how your group already works — not the other way round.
Unlimited users, configurable roles.
Add as many users as you need at no extra cost. Configure roles, visibility, and approval workflows so each user sees only what they need to. Hiring managers, finance, compliance, site leads, and central recruitment teams each get the right access for their function.
Site-level or centralised — or both.
Whether your sites raise their own recruitment requests, your central team manages everything, or you operate a hybrid model, the platform supports it. Approval chains can be configured per site, per role, per cost centre, or by spend threshold.
Unlimited sites, unlimited cost centres.
The platform scales from a 3-site practice to a 100+ site corporate group without changing tier or pricing structure. Use it across every site, every department, and every cost centre with no per-site or per-user fees.
Reporting configured for every stakeholder.
Build custom reports for whoever needs them — finance, ops, compliance, clinical leads, the board. Each stakeholder sees the data that matters to their role. Standard reports cover spend, fill rates, agency performance, time-to-hire, and compliance status; custom reports can be built to any specification.
No implementation cost — at any tier.
We configure the platform around your existing structure as part of onboarding. There is no setup fee. Whether you sign up to Basic, Plus, or Bespoke, configuration and onboarding are included.
“300 hours per month of team time recovered”
22-site UK veterinary group
Read the case study →Try the platform. No sign-up. No sales call.
The interactive demo walks you through a real Ember VMS workflow — posting a vacancy, reviewing agency submissions, approving timesheets — at your own pace. Five minutes, no commitment.
Demo opens in a new tab. No login required.
