Many different types of businesses use the services of recruitment agencies to hire temporary workers for a broad array of reasons. Agency workers might be used to cover temporary absences of permanent staff due to holidays, maternity, or sickness. They might be temporarily brought in to businesses to provide additional labour during particularly busy periods, when companies require interim increases in skilled hands on deck, but do not warrant the recruitment of permanent team members.
Agency workers undoubtedly provide enormous gap plugging benefits to numerous employers with a variety of different workforce issues to resolve. The Agency Workers Regulations 2010, which came in to force in October 2011, are suggestive that the Government considers the value of agency workers to employers worthy of rewarding.
What the regulations mean, in human resources terms, is that agency workers used by businesses for more than 12 weeks are entitled to the employment conditions of permanent staff, including holiday pay, overtime and shift allowances. Other direct employment benefits, such as maternity and paternity leave, pension contributions, and sick pay are excluded.
Just as is the case with all manner of evolving employment law, it might sound straightforward enough in theory to employers and their human resources representatives. The area becomes cloudier, however, in relation to what definitively constitutes 12 week qualifying periods, such as continuity, days or hours worked. Hence, there are blurred areas that might only be identified when it is too late, and employment tribunal action has already been instigated by aggrieved agency workers.
At NorthgateArinso, we formulate purpose built outsourced human resources packages to suit the very specific needs of an enormous spectrum of different clients using agency workers on a regular or an ad hoc basis. We ensure that they are kept up to date with employment law that affects them, and work hand in hand with them to make their transitions as painless and simple as possible.