Temporary agency worker recruitment

Temporary agency workers are individuals that are engaged via an employment business on a short-term basis and have their payroll managed by a third-party outside of Essex County Council (ECC). A temporary agency worker is not an employee of ECC and is usually brought in for a short period of time to cover a specific piece of work and paid for either on an hourly or daily rate. 

Examples of when temporary agency workers are used, can be: 

• the staffing requirement is short term
• flexible resource is required for a short period of time to cover an increase in work
• when individuals are required who are considered independent and/or impartial and should not be placed on ECC staff payroll
• to cover short term absence 
• to facilitate a flexible payment method (pay per assessment, milestone basis) for a set project which is short term in nature

If you need to engage a temporary agency worker, you can raise a new recruitment requisition using My Recruitment. A member of the Resourcing team will be assigned to support you through this process. 

When engaged, all temporary agency workers are set up with a placement on CR.Net, which is the payroll and billing technology platform provided for the time sheeting and payment of temporary agency workers and is provided by our third-party provider, Matrix SCM. Temporary agency workers are never paid directly by ECC or placed on ECC payroll; you should not enter into any engagement with a temporary agency worker whereby ECC pay them directly.  

Temporary agency workers will be sourced via the Resourcing team for you. Or if needed, we will use a recruitment agency to support the sourcing of the right agency worker for you. All temporary agency workers at ECC are set up for a period of 26 weeks, however you can set their assignment as shorter than this if you would like to. Should you need to extend a temporary agency worker’s assignment beyond 26 weeks you will need to raise an extension request by emailing the Temporary Recruitment team (PDF, 125 KB). You will require budget holder approval. 

If you require somebody in post for longer than 26 weeks, you should consider hiring on a fixed term basis as temporary agency workers are only supposed to be used for short term needs and not to fill longer term resourcing needs.