Changes for labour and agency workers

The Good Work Plan, It’s the biggest change to employment law and it starts on the 6^th April 2020. The UK government has seen this as a priority to protect the labour workers’ rights, as that of an employee. Part of the Good Work Plan is to ensure there is increased protection for agency/labour workers.

SMAS Worksafe assesses to SSIP core criteria, requiring evidence on how organisation have arrangements in place when appointing labour workers. With so many organisations having a large labour workforce and only employing less than five employees, they were being assessed as an under-five organisation negating certain questions as they would not need a written process.

SMAS Worksafe implemented a change at the start of 2019, by ensuring all employees and labour are equated together, to negate the under-five option and protect all workers. The change was implemented to support and guide our members and other workers not employed as an employee. Members must ensure they have a robust system in place to protect all personnel by implementing workers within their management system during the assessment process.

With the update criteria set by the SSIP in December 2019, all registered and certificating SSIP members who certify organisation must implement the change to their prequalification questionnaire. Companies going for an SSIP assessment must now fulfil the following:

“ For those organisations that directly employ under 5 personnel but outsource scoped activities to labour-only subcontractors and/or temporary workers then these organisations shall be expected to provide full documented evidence to meet SSIP Core Criteria requirements. These types of organisations shall not be classed as under 5 for the SSIP Portal data “ (SSIP, 2019)

If you need any help or further guidance please don’t hesitate to get in touch with SMAS Worksafe.