A webinar hosted last month by the Recruitment & Employment Confederation in order to gauge the impact on how workers and employers were approaching Agency Workers Regulations has borne fruit, with the more than 140 participants chiming in on issues such as managing information requests and calculating holiday entitlements.
According to the results of webinar information gathering efforts, 86 per cent of REC members reported that AWR has had little to no impact on the overall levels of demand for short-term staff such as freelancers or contractors employed through umbrella companies. 4 out of every 10 members said that they actually had no real awareness of what the regulations entailed, while just over half (51 per cent) reported that workers were simply ‘getting on with things’ even though they were indeed aware of the regulations, and only 8 per cent of respondents said they predicted AWR-related tribunal activities would surge over the next half year.
The results of the survey fit within the framework of recent findings that indicated prospects for umbrella companies are climbing upward, as 84 per cent of businesses are committed to maintaining the number of interim workers they have in their employ. Many of these employers may actually increase the amount of temporary employees over the coming year, especially since the flexibility of contract workers offers a measure of comfort against the current economic mess in the eurozone.
Umbrella company experts say that it is gratifying to see that contractors working within the UK have seen only minimal impact from AWR, even though it has been in force now for several months.
