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As the Agency Worker Regulations (AWR) heads towards the end of its first 12 week qualifying period, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), the representative body for the UK recruitment industry, have reported that December's ‘Report on Jobs' showed an "ongoing growth in temp billings".
Despite fears that the launch of the AWR on October 1st this year would have a negative impact on the temporary staff market, the REC this week also described future hiring intensions as "encouraging" with demand for temporary staff up from the same time last in 2010.
Tom Hadley, Director of Policy & Professional Services at the REC shared more positive news on Twitter yesterday saying:
@HadleysComment: Jobs Outlook - 81% of biz plan to grow or maintain levels of agency staff. Significant proportion - 31% - plan to actually increase use.
As expected the issue of administration implications created by the launch of the AWR has been highlighted by many REC members with questions about the new regulations featuring in the top 3 queries made to the REC legal helpline:
- Calculating holiday pay for agency workers who have qualified for equal treatment
- Calculating basic pay (hourly rate) for agency workers who have qualified for equal treatment
- Terminating Regulation 10 (Swedish Derogation) contracts of employment and putting agency workers back on a contract of services.
In November REC quoted around 20% of employers remained unaware of the regulations. This has changed significantly in the weeks leading up to the end of the first qualifying period with feedback now showing 94% of employers are aware of the regulations.
With the first qualifying period ending this week there are still some reserving their opinion on the regulations for now, with one contributor to the recent REC survey describing the impact on demand as:
"so far, so ‘not so bad'. However, it will be interesting to see if this still stands after the 12 week qualifying period kicks in."
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