Worker status & pay
What are the Agency Worker Regulations 2010 (AWR)?
The Agency Worker Regulations 2010 give agency workers the right to the same basic working and employment conditions as a comparable direct employee, once they have completed a qualifying period in the same role with the same hirer.
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<a href="https://agencyoptix.co.uk/glossary/agency-worker-regulations">What are the Agency Worker Regulations 2010 (AWR)?</a> — diagram by
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</figure>Some rights apply from day one — access to collective facilities and to information about vacancies — and the equal treatment rights on pay and working time apply only after the qualifying period.
The clock runs against the same role with the same hirer, which makes tracking it a data problem rather than a policy one. Breaks between assignments, and whether a new assignment is genuinely a different role, both affect the calculation.
Establishing what equal treatment means in practice requires information from the hirer about comparable employees. An agency cannot determine parity from its own records alone, and getting that information is a conversation worth having at the start rather than at week eleven.
What goes wrong in practice
- Qualifying periods tracked per assignment rather than per role with a hirer, which resets a clock that should have continued.
- Role titles changed to appear to restart the clock, which does not work and is treated as avoidance.
- Comparator information never obtained from the hirer, so parity is guessed at when it falls due.
- Day-one rights overlooked entirely because attention is on the qualifying period.