The governance foundation of Operance.

Every published operator passes identity, credential and reference verification before their profile is visible to businesses. Verification is performed and recorded by Operance, not self-attested, and verification status is held server-side.

A profile that lapses against the verification standard is withdrawn from surfacing until the standard is restored. Businesses see verification status on the profile; operators see the date and scope of their own verification record.

Where a role is confidential, an operator's identity, contact detail and full profile remain closed until the business reserves an introduction credit, the operator accepts, and — where the role requires it — both parties accept the platform NDA.

The NDA acceptance is timestamped, party-attributed and held against the engagement record. It is not collected in side channels and it is not assumed from conduct. Messaging only opens once the gate has been passed.

Each introduction creates an engagement record. The record carries the role, the parties, the credit reservation, the introduction response, any NDA acceptance, the message thread, every proposal version, and the confirmation when the engagement is formed. State transitions are appended to an immutable audit log.

The chronology is preserved when an engagement renews, when scope changes, and when the parties move between phases of the same relationship. The engagement record is the institutional memory of the work — available to the business, the operator and Operance, and unavailable to anyone else.

Declaration is the moment both parties record the agreed shape of an engagement — scope, fee model, start date, duration. It captures commercial intent on the engagement record. No fee is triggered by declaration.

Activation is the moment both parties independently confirm the engagement has formally commenced. Activation is the institutional event that triggers the fixed £3,500 Engagement Activation Fee, excluding VAT, invoiced by Operance to the business within fourteen days. The operator is never charged and operator fees are not deducted. Activation governs commencement; it is not a placement, success or commission fee. There is one fixed fee per engagement.

An accepted introduction is protected for twelve (12) months from the date the introduction is accepted. During that period, any commercial engagement of the operator — or of any individual or entity controlled by, controlling, or under common control with the operator, including a personal service company — by the business, any of its group entities, or any party engaging on its behalf, is treated as an Operance-introduced engagement and is subject to the Engagement Activation Fee set out in the Terms of Service.

The protection is a contractual continuity arrangement, not a restraint on either party. The operator remains free to engage with whom they choose; the business remains free to structure the engagement as it wishes. What the protected period establishes is that the engagement, however it is structured, is recorded on the same terms, and subject to the same single Engagement Activation Fee, as if it had been formed inside the platform.

Operators who accept an introduction undertake to disclose, through the platform, any engagement that follows from it within the protected period. Disclosure is a procedural professional obligation — comparable to the conflicts and engagement disclosures expected in legal, accounting and advisory practice — rather than an enforcement mechanism.

Disclosed engagements remain on the operator's verified standing. Undisclosed engagements that come to light through other channels are addressed under the Terms of Service and may affect verified standing. Operance does not publish or share the commercial terms of a disclosed engagement.

Non-circumvention on Operance is procedural. Each engagement record carries the date the introduction was accepted, the parties and the protection window. Messages are scanned at write time for off-platform contact patterns; confirmed signals open an internal flag without disrupting the conversation between the parties.

Where an engagement is formed within the protected period without disclosure, the fixed £3,500 Engagement Activation Fee, excluding VAT, set out in the Terms of Service remains payable by the business. The mechanism is administrative, not adversarial: the record exists; the fee follows the record.

Operance is a workspace and a record. It is not a recruitment agency, a staffing intermediary, an employer of record, a labour supplier, a paymaster or an escrow provider. Operance does not represent operators on commission, does not own the engagement, does not sit on cash flow between the parties, and does not deduct from operator pay. The commercial relationship is and remains directly between the business and the operator.

Engagement records, NDA acceptances, proposal versions and audit-log entries are retained for the life of the relationship and for the period required to administer the protected introduction window and the Engagement Activation Fee. Personal data is processed under the Privacy Notice.

Access controls are enforced server-side. Verification status, introduction credits, NDA gating, contact-share detection and engagement-record completeness are governed by database-level controls rather than client code. Operance maintains the platform; the parties retain their own legal, tax and procurement responsibilities.