There are a number of challenges set by the Agency Worker Directive, not least presenting the scheduling Agency or Staff Bank with a clear unambiguous report on where any worker stands in respect of the regulations and any hirer.

It was an interesting task to read the regulations and then change them into a (not so simple) mathematical formula which could then be used to do a number of tasks:

• Instantly display the employee status prior to a shift being filled if the worker was approaching a change of situation under the AWR
• Produce a report for the agency indicating ahead of time when workers were nearing the point where there may be financial implications for any hirer under the AWR - so that they may fulfil their obligations under the AWR of keeping the hirer informed.
• Produce a report for the hirer indicating ahead of time when workers were nearing the point where there may be financial implications for the hirer under the AWR - so that they may fulfil their obligations under the AWR of keeping the Agency informed.

So one of the first tasks was to test our formula against a database of some 10-15 thousand employees, some past, some present and historical data stretching over five or so years. As pointed out in other articles in this series, although the minimum qualification period for a worker under the AWR act is only 12 weeks: the various exclusion periods (where the count is only paused) means an effective minimum monitoring period of two years. So it was very important to test against reasonable size data to ensure that our reporting process did not gum up the works for other users and responded in an acceptable time.

The report below is a sample from one of the more interesting employees we found. A few comments about the report:
The worker works for various customers and under the Agency worker regulations this means that a 6 week period employed at another customer without any work at the first means a hard reset of the 12 week clock.
Customers should be warned reasonably well in advance if possible financial implications are about to arise for the hirer.
There is no direct relationship between a worker's status for one customer and another customer. Weeks where an employee works for both and weeks where an employee may not work, both serve to break up "regular count" of the 12 week clock.

The reset column has the number of weeks contibuting to the reset in brackets. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Click on the image to see a larger version. The view below is an extract from report number 1071 on the general tab.

The following reports are currently available:

• Report for each worker 1071 on the general tab, formatted as above.
• Report for each legal entity, hirer or "customer" 1072 on the general tab, formatted as above.
• Report for each legal entity, hirer or "customer" 1073 on the general tab, with a colum for each employee rather than a heading.

These reports are in addition to the on the fly in line reporting when workers are allocated to to "hirers".

If these reports have not been run before, please see here:

Video and web page help on running a report which has not previously been used

Additional information

We have a number of questions with the Department of Business and innovation relating to clarification on the AWR. The answers when they come will be published in this section of our site.

Update:

The AWR has been updated, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2011/1941/made

We have received clarification (amongst other things, on the order in which certain conflicting provisos should be applied). These changes will be incorporated in our end of September release.

Other pages which may interest you

• Summary of the Agency worker regulation and the employee scheduling factors.
• Agency worker regulations AWR maximum weeks
• Agency worker regulations AWR re-setting the clock

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