The end of the temp?

The end of the temp?


A recent report has suggested that employers may be swapping temporary workers for permanent staff because of uncertainty over the Agency Workers Regulations, which came into force on 1 October 2011. This comes just days after a survey suggesting that almost one in five employers have opted to engage agency workers on permanent contracts of employment, which guarantee them minimum levels of pay between agency assignments.

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation and KPMG Report on Jobs, published on 11 April 2012, states that recruitment consultants reported a rise in permanent staff placements for the third month in succession during March. In contrast, agencies’ temporary/contract staff billings decreased. Overall, it was the fastest drop in short-term appointments for over two-and-a-half years. According to the report, panel members frequently indicated that employers had chosen to convert temporary workers into permanent employees due to the effect of the Agency Workers Regulations.

However, although the report has suggested that this change may be linked to employer uncertainty over the Agency Worker Regulations, it has also suggested that the change could be due to the fact that increasing business confidence has resulted in more employers being prepared to take on permanent hires rather than temporary staff. This is supported by recent research from recruitment firm Adecco, which found that 78% of employers had not noticed any effect from the Regulations since their introduction, and only 16% believed that the Regulations had effected their hiring plans for 2012.

This report underlines the difficulty in linking the number of temporary workers engaged at any one time to the Agency Workers Regulations, and is a reminder that it may be some time before the true impact of these Regulations can be assessed.