|
Industry Activity
The first 12 week qualifying period for the Agency Worker Regulations was completed in December 2011 and despite concerns from many that this would have a negative impact on the UK temp market reports from the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) show that "there continues to be a strong demand for temporary/contract staff" in many sectors. Some of the sectors highlighted included: engineering, construction, IT & computing and secretarial/clerical.
The latest Jobs Outlook survey also shows that "demand for temporary staff has remained stable and is up on the same time last year".
A "slight decrease" noted in temp billings in REC's recent report has been attributed to the economy rather than any impact from the AWR.
There is also good news predicted for the rest of 2012 with an 87% of employers reporting to REC that they are looking to grow or maintain temporary staff levels this year.
Putting it into Practice
Feedback from agencies to REC have highlighted that in many cases temporary workers have a "widespread misunderstanding" regarding entitlements relating to AWR.
Queries to RECs Helpline have remained focussed on the same issues as last month: holiday pay, calculating basic pay and putting agency workers back on a contract for service from a Swedish Derogation contract. Additionally there has been a number of queries relating to the Silver Jubilee holiday and how this relates to agency workers.
At Escape we have also noticed an increase in queries to our AWR Project Team as well as a recent increase in traffic to our online AWR information pages for hirers and agency workers. As expected this increase was noted following the first week 12 qualifying period.
With many clients and agencies continuing to review and develop their AWR processes and agency workers building their understanding of AWR entitlements it is clear that the regulations are still in an early stage of their implementation. However it also appears that the initial concern over impact on temp staff levels in the short and long term may have been unfounded as employers continue to predict a strong need for temporary workers.
|
Log In
Register
