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19th October 2011 : What's happening with the Agency Workers Directive
Anyone working at an umbrella company would tell you that September and October have been rather busy months for us as an industry. The Agency Workers Regulations (as they are now called) have kicked in, and the volume of changes that everyone has had to make are really quite impressive. I don't think umbrella companies have faced such significant changes since the MSC legislation came in back in 2007.
The Managed Service Company legislation forced a complete re-design of the company from the ground up, and still forces us to do things in some very strange ways to remain compliant. The Agency Workers Regulations (or AWR as they are rapidly becoming known) has been less taxing to the company as a whole, but it's sheer complexity has kept directors, tax advisors and lawyers up at night. Now everyone has a handle on things it's just a matter of putting plans in place and Bob's your uncle.
So what have all these changes got us? Well we've all learned a whole lot more about rights in the workplace, holiday pay, HR compliance and what derogated means or even what Swedish Derogation is, we've got a lot more contact with the agencies (who I'm sure would much rather be working on finding and filling places and who can blame them?).
The last couple of months hasn't all been stress and hard work though, there have been a couple of very pleasing things to come about. The first is that we were picked as one of the Telegraph 1000 'A celebration of the 1,000 mid-sized companies which have weathered the economic storm and are set to be the foundation of the recovery.' which was a nice surprise. Only one other umbrella company made the list and they've been around as long as we have so it's nice club to be in.
The second piece of good news is that we've had 5 employees join us full time, 3 new people joining the company, and 2 people from the early days of Gabem rejoin in new roles, it's great to have them back and watch the company continue to grow.
Hugo
@GabemUmbrella
19/10/2011
