by Fiona Hobbs, Head of HR & Legal Membership Services
18. April 2011 13:41
The Agency Workers Regulations 2010 will come into force on 1 October 2011 and earlier this year we ran a series of seminars to help HR professionals understand the impact the Regulations will have on their business. Draft guidance has now been released, with final Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) guidance likely to be available in April/May.
The Agency Workers Regulations 2010 (‘the Regulations’) provide that agency workers working for the same hirer for more than 12 weeks will be entitled to equal treatment in certain basic terms and conditions, including pay, as directly recruited employees of the hirer doing a similar job.
The Regulations also give agency workers certain 'day one’ rights, including no less favourable access to collective facilities and amenities (including access to canteen, child care and transport facilities) and the same opportunity as comparable employees to be told about job vacancies.
EEF has been part of a BIS working group looking at early drafts of the guidance. The way in which the guidance deals with particular issues will affect how you deal with agency workers on a day-to-day basis and could impact on how or whether you use agency workers in the future.
We expect that all companies who use agency workers will have to alter some of their practices. We are therefore running two series of seminars, the first in June and July and the second in September. Our first update, Agency Worker Regulations 2010: Filling in the gaps is designed to bring delegates up to speed on the content of the finalised guidance and its impact on how to apply the regulations on the ground. We will be looking at what the guidance means for previously unanswered questions. This seminar is aimed at HR professionals who have already attended our earlier workshops, Gearing up for the Agency Workers Regulations 2010 in February; or those who already have a good knowledge of the contents of the Regulations.
The second seminars, run in September, are a rerun of our hugely popular Gearing up for the Agency Workers Regulations workshops for those who missed them. Updated to include the revised guidance from The Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS), these seminars will explain the new law and help you plan strategically for the changes. Delegates will benefit from our involvement with BIS during the drafting of the regulations and guidance and will be able to share their ideas on a confidential basis with others facing similar issues. These workshops are aimed at HR professionals who would prefer to attend a workshop which assumes no prior knowledge of Agency Workers Regulations.
As ever, we urge you to book early to secure your place at these popular events.