Using a recruitment agency to find staff

Employers using recruitment agencies to find temporary or permanent workers have certain responsibilities.

Recruitment agencies that find staff for other businesses, but pay the staff themselves, are known as ‘employment businesses’.

If you take on workers through an employment business, they’re responsible for ensuring the workers’ rights under working time and minimum wage rules.

Recruitment agencies providing workers for agriculture, food processing, horticultural and shellfish-gathering industries are known as ‘gangmasters’ - if you use one, you need to make sure they are licensed gangmasters.

Employers’ responsibilities

As an employer, you’re responsible for:

  • agency workers’ health and safety
  • ensuring they have the same access to shared facilities as other workers
  • letting them know about relevant job vacancies in your business

However, you can stop providing work to an agency worker, as long as they’re not employed by you.

Additional rights after 12 weeks

After 12 weeks in the same job, agency workers are entitled to the same terms and conditions as employees doing the same or similar work. This includes:

  • pay
  • working time, rest periods and breaks
  • night work
  • annual leave
  • time off for antenatal appointments for pregnant workers

For more details, see guidance on agency worker regulations.

Transfer fees

Recruitment agencies can charge a transfer fee if you employ a worker directly, or a worker is supplied to you through another recruitment agency after their initial contract. Recruitment agencies must tell you in your contract if they intend to charge you transfer fees.

When an agency worker begins work with you, a recruitment agency can only charge a transfer fee if you take the worker on within either of the following periods, whichever ends later:

  • 8 weeks of the end of their last assignment with you
  • 14 weeks of the start of their first assignment with you

If there has been a break of 42 days between the worker’s assignments with you, the 14 weeks will begin from the start date of the most recent assignment.

The recruitment agency may also charge you a transfer fee if:

  • you introduce a worker to a third party who then employs them during this period
  • you employ a worker introduced to you by a recruitment agency before they have started their assignment with you through the agency

Extended hire period

If you employ a worker supplied to you by a recruitment agency, the agency must offer you an extended hire period instead of charging you a transfer fee. This means they would continue to supply the worker to you for an agreed period without changing the terms of the assignment. Once the agreed period ends, you would employ the worker directly without any transfer fee.

A recruitment agency may charge you a transfer fee if they introduce a worker to you and you employ them:

  • before they start work through the recruitment agency
  • through a different agency, before they start work through the introducing recruitment agency

In both cases, the introducing agency must offer the option of a hire period instead of charging you a transfer fee. The terms of this hire period must be set out in your contract with the recruitment agency.

If a recruitment agency does not offer you an extended hire period where you wish to take on the worker, they cannot charge you a transfer fee.

Get advice or make a complaint

Contact the Employment Agency Standard (EAS) Inspectorate, the state regulator of private recruitment agencies.

Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate
eas@businessandtrade.gov.uk
Telephone: 020 4566 5333
Find out about call charges

You can also contact the Acas helpline.

Part of Employ someone: step by step

  1. Step 1 Check your business is ready to employ staff

    1. Prepare your business to take on employees

  2. Step 2 Recruit someone

    You need to advertise the role and interview candidates. You can use a recruitment agency to do this or do it yourself.

    1. Find out about recruiting someone yourself on Acas
    2. You are currently viewing: Find out about using a recruitment agency

    As an employer you must make sure you recruit employees fairly.

    1. Avoid discrimination during recruitment
    2. Make your application process accessible for employees with disabilities or health conditions

  3. and Check they have the right to work in the UK

    1. Find out how to check an applicant's right to work

  4. and Find out if they need a DBS check

    You may need to check someone's criminal record, for example, if they'll be working in healthcare or with children.

    1. Find out if you need a DBS check
    2. How to do a DBS check

  5. Step 3 Check if they need to be put into a workplace pension

    Check if you need to put your employee into a workplace pension scheme:

  6. Step 4 Agree a contract and salary

    When someone accepts a job offer they have a contract with you as their employer.

    1. Check what the National Minimum Wage is for different ages
    2. Check what the National Minimum Wage is for different types of work
    3. Check what to include in a contract
    4. Agree a written statement of employment particulars

  7. Step 5 Tell HMRC about your new employee

    You must tell HMRC about your new employee on or before their first pay day.

    1. Tell HMRC about a new employee
    2. Get their personal details and P45 to work out their tax code
    3. If you don’t have their P45, use HMRC’s ‘starter checklist’
    4. Check what to do when you start paying your employee