Temporary staff and agency workers in particular can prove an expensive resource for the NHS and as a result trusts have been set a target of reducing expenditure on temporary staff by £300m by 2014 as part of the Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) agenda.
To help you do this, the NHS Employers organisation developed a programme to help you reduce agency costs.
Our work includes:
In October 2011, the new
Agency Workers Regulations came into effect. This means that agency workers are entitled to equal treatment in comparison with a directly hired comparator after 12 weeks of service, and a number of rights from the day they are hired.
To help you plan for the introduction of the regulations, NHS Employers developed a comprehensive online toolkit outlining the likely impact they would have as well as a guide on how to meet your responsibilities under the new agency workers regulations.