An Acas study has revealed that amongst callers to the Acas helpline, agency workers were often unaware of their employment rights and afraid of raising workplace concerns due to fears over job security. The Acas paper ‘Three sides to every story: the impact of the Agency Worker Regulations’ looked at recent research around agency workers as well as employers and employees that called the Acas helpline about agency work. Acas' analysis revealed that agency workers were often unaware of their rights particularly around holiday pay, notice periods and the 12 week qualifying period when an agency worker doing the same work is entitled to have the same basic terms and conditions of employment as if they had been employed directly by the hirer. In addition they were often afraid of asserting their statutory rights due to believing that there's an imbalance of power in the employment relationship.

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