The UK’s hiring outlook remains cautious, especially on the temporary side, but the fear of the Agency Workers Regulation (AWR) damaging the market significantly has not been realised, according to a Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) survey of 600 UK employers.

Just over half (52%) of UK employers said they would slightly increase permanent headcount over the next three months, compared to 26% looking to add more temps.

The majority (62%) of firms were set to keep agency staffing levels the same, while only 1% and 2% of firms respectively expected to significantly decrease permanent and temporary staff levels.

Of the 200 employers polled this month, just 2% said that the AWR, which came into force last year, had meant they had stopped using agency staff altogether. A further 3% said they still used agency staff, but that the regulations had had ‘significant impact’, while the vast majority of firms said that they had either had less impact than feared, or some impact, but that the way they worked had not fundamentally changed.

REC director of research Roger Tweedy comments: “Despite many fears about the detrimental impact that AWR could have on the use of agency workers, UK businesses continue to understand the value in recruiting temporary, flexible labour.

“This data reinforces the findings of research we conducted earlier in the year, so we can be confident that the impact of the regulations has been a lot less damaging than some people feared it would be.”

In fact, the data also correlates with findings elsewhere, and the general impression that the overall effects of AWR have been less than dramatic.