Best practice for recruitment

With employment laws changing, APSCo sets out how best to manage recruitment in 2025

The last year saw drastic shifts in the political landscape that have already impacted public sector recruitment and this will only continue throughout 2025. The Labour Government has set out plans to change hiring as we know it, introducing greater protections for workers and changing the way employers engage talent. 

The measures outlined in the Employment Rights Bill and the Budget will create some challenges for hiring teams (at the time of writing at least), particularly those in sectors such as healthcare and education where agency workers are a staple part of recruitment plans. 

So, what lies in store and how can public sector businesses best tackle recruitment in the year ahead?

Agency worker usage

Agency workers play a critical role in filling gaps across health & social care and education, however reliance on this segment of the workforce has long been criticised. Indeed, towards the end of 2024, we saw new rules come into force which curbed the use of agency social workers in children’s services. 

In the latter quarter of the year, we also saw health and social care secretary, Wes Streeting, announce plans to ban the use of agencies to cover resourcing gaps in the NHS. There may be some scope to reduce agency reliance on lower skilled staffing solutions, but this simply can’t be replicated across all temporary resources. Genuine agency workers still need to be protected to support the needs of the healthcare sector. Niche, highly skilled clinical and non-clinical roles such as IT and digital, will all be required to reform the NHS. But these are often only available through agency workers. 

While there does need to be a longer-term strategy in place to reduce the reliance on agency workers as a result of skills shortages, they will always be a core part of resourcing plans. In the current landscape – where there are simply not enough people to fill the demand – they will remain a stop gap for employers and it is critical that Government policy makers are mindful of this as they continue to push ahead with regulatory changes and restrictions on the use these workers. 

Once there is a more sustainable talent pool for these sectors, then agency staff should be utilised in the way that they are meant to: namely filling unexpected shortages due to illness, for example. 

Again, though, the ability to do this is potentially being limited as a result of proposals by the Labour Government. While at the time of writing, a variety of consultations around zero hours and other elements of the Employment Rights Bill are still open, some of the suggestions will hinder access to true and authentic temporary workers. 

Access to day one rights and the provision of guaranteed hours go against the fundamentals of agency worker engagement. It is impossible for a headteacher, for example, to know in advance how many shifts they will need supply staff for in order to cover unplanned absences. Under current plans, the onus to offer guaranteed hours would fall to staffing businesses themselves which simply isn’t viable for the vast majority of these firms. In fact, many of our members have already voiced their concerns that this would leave them unable to supply agency staff on an on-going basis, which would only be detrimental to public sector employers.

Temporary worker engagement

As with agency workers, temporary resources are also key for the public sector, particularly at a time when budgets are being stretched and employers remain cautious around committing to permanent headcount increases. There’s also a growing desire from workers themselves to operate in a more flexible manner, which has driven more to actively choose to move into temporary rather than permanent roles. 

However, this is also at risk under current proposals. The Government has revealed plans to ban those in permanent jobs from resigning and moving into temporary work in the heath & social care sector. Given that this is often a personal choice rather than one driven by employers or staffing businesses, this has the potential to inadvertently reduce the number of people recruiters can put forward for work. If this option is removed, it risks further damaging recruitment and retention in the sector, and also doesn’t account for the number of permanent professionals that are already supplementing their income through additional temporary work. 

While staffing business and trade bodies like APSCo are raising concerns around this approach and how the Government will be able to fill new gaps that emerge, it is also important the employers across the public sector highlight the potential impact this could have on their talent pools. 

Diversifying talent pools

With a number of remits in the public sector facing significant staff shortages, there is – and arguably has always been – a critical need to increase diversity in recruitment in order to expand talent pool access. Indeed, the publication of the Government’s Get Britain Working whitepaper towards the end of last year focused on encouraging those who are economically inactive back into work to address both staff shortages and low productivity rates.

For employers in the public sector, this will necessitate a review of current hiring and onboarding practices. There may be additional adjustments needed in recruitment to ensure processes are both appealing and fully accessible to everyone. That also means ensuring that any staffing partners, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Recruitment Process Outsourcers (RPOs) that are on Preferred Supplier Lists (PSLs) are themselves taking steps to be more inclusive in their hiring practices. 

From an onboarding perspective, additional support may be required, particularly for those that have been out of employment on long term sick who may require continued medical assistance, greater flexibility around working hours or location, and potential additional training and development to bring them up to speed quickly. 

Manage SOW requirements 

What APSCo and APSCo OutSource members are also seeing is a greater interest in Statement of Work (SOW) engagements, particularly as businesses face increasing costs of employment for full-time workers and more complexity around engaging temporary staff. However, there are risks associated with this approach unless this is genuine SOW engagement.

There have already been examples within Government departments where they have faced fines for misclassification of SOW. It is crucial that employers across the public sector ensure that any Statement of Work engagements are genuine and not disguised contingent or temporary recruitment. That will require closer collaboration between HR, legal, procurement and suppliers to pinpoint areas of potential risk. 

As proposals to reshape employment legislation and agency worker access in the UK continues to be mapped out, it is crucial that public sector businesses are working closely with their staffing partners to understand the exact impact that reforms will have on their recruitment plans. Perhaps more importantly, though, employers need to make their voices heard as the Government continues to consult on its proposals. Unless we collaborate, the sector could see a detrimental impact on its workforce that will be hard to reverse any time soon.