Conduct & regulation
What is a work-seeker?
A work-seeker is a person looking for work through an agency or employment business. Most of the duties in the Conduct Regulations are owed to them, and most of them cannot be waived.
Use this diagram+
Free to use on your own site, in training material or in a handout, as long as the credit link stays on it. Paste this where you want the diagram to appear.
<figure>
<img src="https://agencyoptix.co.uk/glossary/work-seeker/diagram.svg" alt="work-seeker — diagram from AgencyOptix" width="880" height="620" loading="lazy">
<figcaption>
<a href="https://agencyoptix.co.uk/glossary/work-seeker">What is a work-seeker?</a> — diagram by
<a href="https://agencyoptix.co.uk">AgencyOptix</a>
</figcaption>
</figure>The term is deliberately wider than candidate or worker, because the protections attach from the point someone seeks work rather than from the point they are placed.
Terms have to be agreed with them before they are supplied, and that is the requirement most often met after the fact rather than before it.
Charging them for finding them work is prohibited except in narrowly defined circumstances, and those exceptions are much narrower than they are sometimes assumed to be.
What goes wrong in practice
- Terms agreed after the first shift, which is too late.
- Services charged for outside the permitted exceptions.
- Protections assumed to begin at placement rather than at registration.