Pictured: Mark Roberts

Leading Midlands industrial recruitment company gap personnel has invested more than £1m in a new IT system to ensure it is well prepared for far-reaching new legislation giving temporary workers the same rights as permanent employees.

The Agency Workers Regulations (AWR) becomes law in October and gap personnel has been busy preparing for the changes, which will see the biggest ever shake-up of the temporary recruitment industry.

The new regulations give agency workers the right to the same basic employment and working conditions as if they had been recruited directly by the hirer, after completion of a 12-week qualifying period in a job.

There are fears in the industry that many companies and recruitment agencies could fall foul of new regulations which, despite several small amendments, are widely considered to be ambiguous and contain loopholes that could be open to legal challenges through the courts. 

gap personnel, which has appointed a dedicated team to prepare for the new regulations, made the decision to invest £1.2m in its IT systems to ensure it could cope with the changes and provide a seamless service to clients. 

Mark Roberts, operations director of gap personnel, which has offices in the Midlands including Birmingham, said: "In order for us to maintain a competitive advantage and provide major process efficiencies, it was clear that a complete renewal of our IT systems was necessary.

"We have devoted a lot of time to developing this new resource and we are confident that there is nothing else like it out there. It is a bespoke system that will enable us to implement the new regulations as smoothly as possible and provide our clients with all the information they need."

The project involves transferring all of gap personnel's IT infrastructure into a new data centre in Manchester and has been developed with leading industry specialists Frontline Consultancy and SAFE Computing.

"We've been busy preparing for this change for a long time now and have a strategy in place which considers how the changes affect all of our temporary workers and our client companies," added Mark, a member of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation's Industrial Executive Committee.

The regulations implement the EU Agency Workers Directive, agreed in 2008 following endorsement between the TUC and the CBI. 

They aim to equalise pay; duration of working time; length of night work; rest periods and rest breaks and annual leave. However they will not change the status of agency workers so they will not be entitled to rights that only apply to employees, such as redundancy pay.

There are fears that some companies may try to dodge the new legislation by ending temporary workers contracts at 11 weeks, stopping the clock at six weeks then re-hiring them. This is because a break of six weeks before the same worker is hired again ensures they do not qualify for equal treatment, although lawyers are warning that companies who do this could still fall foul of the law.

It is also feared that traditional manufacturing industries such as food, where temporary recruitment is widespread, could be hardest hit.

gap personnel has 30 branches across the country with a group turnover of £60m. During the past year that the company saw its sales margin increase 48 per cent, notching up 800 new contract wins.

The company has also been named one of the 'Best Companies To Work For,' for the fourth consecutive year. 

For more information about gap personnel, please visit their website: www.gap-personnel.com