HR support for recruitment agencies with no in-house HR: your own team and the workers you place.

Straight answers

What agency owners ask us, answered briefly

• What if a temp has been with the same client for 12 weeks?

  Under the Agency Workers Regulations, after 12 weeks in the same role with the same hirer an agency worker is entitled to the same basic pay and conditions as if the hirer had recruited them directly. From day one they can use the hirer's shared facilities and must be told about its job vacancies. Breaks and a change of role can pause or restart the count, so keep a record of it.

• What if we have paid holiday to temps the same way for years?

  Agency workers are workers, so they get paid holiday. For leave years that started on or after 1 April 2024, holiday for irregular-hours workers builds up at 12.07% of the hours they work. You can choose to pay it as rolled-up holiday pay instead: 12.07% of their pay, shown as a separate item on each payslip and explained in their Key Information Document. Since 6 April 2026 you must keep six years of holiday records.

  Holiday record keeping

• What if a temp is off sick?

  If you pay your temps through your own payroll, Statutory Sick Pay is yours to pay when they qualify. Since 6 April 2026 it is due from the first full day off sick and the lower earnings limit has gone, so more temps qualify. Where no contract continues between assignments, it usually ends when the assignment does.

  Check who qualifies and how much

• What if a temp starts on Monday?

  The right to work check comes before they start, and when you supply a temp, it is yours to do. From 1 October 2026 the duty covers workers as well as employees, for anyone who starts on or after that date.

• What if a consultant leaves and takes clients with them?

  Restrictions in a consultant's contract only hold if they protect a real business interest and go no further than they need to. We write non-solicitation and non-dealing clauses to fit the role, alongside a commission scheme that says what happens to deals in progress when someone leaves.

• What if the auditor asks for both handbooks?

  Office staff and agency workers need different documents. If you supply temps, each work-seeker must have a Key Information Document and written terms before you start looking for work for them, and a handbook and policies that fit how they work.

  One handbook or two?

• What if guaranteed hours rules reach our agency workers?

  They do, under the Employment Rights Act 2025, with a start date planned for 2027. It is the hirer, your client, who must offer guaranteed hours to a qualifying agency worker. The agency must make sure its workers know about the right, and pay them when a shift is cancelled, moved or cut short at short notice. The reference period and the amounts are still to be set by regulations, so start tracking the hours each worker actually works now.

  What is changing, and when

General information, not legal advice. Dates that may still move are tracked on our employment law changes page.