Recruitment agencies have been criticised for many things. But being blamed for a lack of good quality part-time jobs in the UK is surely a first. 

Speaking at a recent London HR Connection event, Emma Stewart, co-founder of Women Like Us, a social business that works with women who want to carry on working after they've had children, laid into recruitment agencies, telling HR professionals that there was “a fundamental flaw” in their business model. 

“The reason why we don’t have a burgeoning part-time labour market is because part time means part fee, and therefore there is no commercial incentive for an agency in the short term to say ‘I will do the same amount of work because I am only getting 15% on 21 hours as opposed to 35 hours’,” where although the rate might be the same, the fee would be higher. Stewart said that the vast majority of part-time jobs were poorly paid.

Stewart acknowledged that there was a growing recognition within the industry that the labour market is changing, but she argued that the industry could do more. For example, helping employers to redesign jobs around the needs of women with family responsibilities would have the added benefit of widening the pool of available talent, she suggested. 

Speaking from the audience, John Maxted, formerly chief executive of HR recruiter Digby Morgan, said that when he ran the company he found it very difficult employing people part time. “Mainly because when people called them back and they weren’t there then we had issues,” he explained. 

• Aside from the fact that recent figures from the Office of National Statistics showed that the number of people in part-time employment rose by 2% in the quarter ended January 2013 compared to the same quarter a year before, was Stewart right when she says agencies have no economic incentive to take on part-time assignments? Let us know.