Guidance for employers

Who this is for

Registered managers, deputies, service managers and owners — anyone who has spent an evening trying to cover a shift, or five months trying to fill a post.

Some of what follows is about getting better service from an agency. Some of it is about reducing how often you need one. Both matter, and they pull in the same direction: services that brief well, treat workers decently and recruit properly need agency cover less and get better cover when they do.

What to ask any staffing agency

Including us. If an agency is evasive about any of these, that tells you something useful.

What checks do you carry out, and can I see the record?

Identity, right to work, DBS at the appropriate level, employment history, references, professional registration verified with the register. Ask for the compliance record for anyone supplied to you. A reputable agency expects that question.

How do you verify professional registration?

The answer should be "directly with the register, and we recheck it". A photograph of a certificate is not verification.

How do you track training expiry?

Mandatory training lapsing mid-placement is a common and avoidable compliance gap. Ask who monitors it.

What will you tell me if you cannot cover a shift, and when?

You want early honesty, not a booking accepted hopefully. The cost of a 6am cancellation falls entirely on you.

How are your workers briefed before they arrive?

If the answer is "we send them the address", expect to spend the first hour of every shift orienting a stranger.

Can I request the same workers?

Continuity is better for the people you support. Ask whether the agency actively tries for it or simply fills from a list.

What are your rates, and what could change them?

Get rates in writing, including enhanced rates for nights, weekends and bank holidays, and what constitutes short notice.

What happens about temporary-to-permanent transfers?

Ask up front rather than when you have found someone you want to keep.

Are you making any claims I should verify?

If an agency claims accreditations, framework places or NHS approval, ask for the detail and check it. Badges on a website are not evidence.

Briefing a shift properly

The single highest-return thing a service can do with agency staff. A worker who arrives informed is productive within minutes; one who does not spends an hour finding out what you already knew.

A useful briefing covers:

• Where to park, which door, who to ask for
• The shape of the shift and the routine
• What the service is — client group, support approach, anything distinctive
• Specific needs and risks relevant to the work, shared appropriately and on site
• Where the essentials are: PPE, files, kitchen, first aid, fire exits
• What they should not do without checking
• Who is in charge of the shift and how to escalate
• Break arrangements

Have it written down once and reuse it. A one-page service induction sheet, handed over on arrival, pays for itself on the first shift and every shift after.

One more thing, and it is free: introduce agency workers to the team and to the people they are supporting. Services where agency staff are treated as part of the shift get noticeably better work than services where they are treated as a resource.

Your responsibilities for agency workers

An agency worker in your service works under your policies, your supervision and your registration, following your instructions in the same way as your own staff. That means you are responsible for:

• Induction to the setting, however brief, including fire safety and emergency procedures
• Safe systems of work and suitable equipment, in working order
• Not asking anyone to work outside their competence — and taking "I have not been trained for that" as the correct answer, not as obstruction
• Supervision appropriate to the role, particularly on a first shift
• Incident reporting through your own systems, including anything involving an agency worker
• Your safeguarding procedure applying equally, whoever raises the concern and whoever it concerns
• Records of who worked which shift, and the compliance evidence to support it

The agency remains responsible for the worker's employment, pay, checks and briefing. Both halves have to work. An agency that supplies a well-checked worker into a service that never inducts anyone still produces a poor and potentially unsafe shift.

Getting continuity rather than strangers

Continuity is achievable with agency staff, and services that get it usually do the same few things:

• Book further ahead where you can. Short notice limits the pool to whoever is free, not whoever fits.
• Ask for named workers who have worked well, and say so to the agency.
• Give feedback both ways. Tell the agency who was good, not only who was not. It changes who they offer you.
• Treat returning workers as regulars. Remember names, include them in handover, let them use the same routine.
• Use block bookings rather than scattered single shifts where the need is predictable.
• Be a service people want to come back to. Agency workers talk to each other and choose where they go. The services that complain most about agency quality are sometimes the ones nobody wants to return to.

Recruiting permanently so people stay

Agency use is often a symptom. If a service is permanently short, the durable fix is upstream.

Write the advert for the person, not the file

Say what the work actually is, what the hours are, and what the pay is. Adverts without a salary get fewer and worse applicants. "Competitive rates" tells a candidate nothing except that you would rather not say.

Reply quickly

Good care and nursing candidates are rarely available for long. A week of silence loses people to whoever answered first. This is the most common avoidable loss in care recruitment.

Recruit for temperament, train for tasks

Reliability, warmth, judgement and honesty are hard to train. Moving and handling is not. Some of the best support workers came from outside care entirely.

Be honest about the hard parts

Sleep-ins, distressed behaviour, a difficult rota, lone working. People who find out on day three leave by week three. People told in advance make an informed choice and stay.

Make the first month deliberate

Most avoidable leavers go in the first weeks. Shadow shifts, a named person to ask, a check-in at the end of the first week and again at a month. Cheap, and more effective than any retention bonus.

Ask leavers why, and believe them

Exit conversations are the cheapest research available. If three people mention the same manager or the same rota, that is data.

A better interview process

• Interview quickly and offer a choice of times, including outside a nine-to-five.
• Show them the service. A walk round tells a candidate more than any question, and tells you how they respond to the environment.
• Ask about real situations rather than hypotheticals. "Tell me about a time someone refused support" beats "how would you handle conflict?"
• Involve the people you support, where they want to be involved and in a way that works for them.
• Be clear about the offer — pay, hours, shift pattern, probation, training.
• Decide fast and say so. Even a no, delivered promptly, builds your reputation locally. A silence damages it.

Candidates judge your service by how you recruit, and they tell each other. In a region with a finite pool of care and nursing staff, an interview process with a bad reputation is a long-term recruitment problem.

When a placement goes wrong

Whether agency or permanent, deal with it directly and early.

With agency workers: tell the agency specifically what happened rather than asking generally for someone different. A good agency will act on it, stop offering that worker to you if appropriate, and address it with them. An agency that shrugs is telling you what its standards are.

With permanent staff: follow your own procedures, document it, and address issues while they are small.

If a concern relates to the safety or wellbeing of someone you support, follow your safeguarding procedure immediately. That takes priority over every commercial relationship, including with your agency, and any agency worth using will cooperate fully with it rather than defend its position.

Where Oakline fits

We supply temporary staff and recruit permanently for care and healthcare organisations in Sheffield and South Yorkshire. You are welcome to put every question in the "what to ask" section above to us directly — we would rather answer them than have you assume.

Oakline supplies staff; it does not deliver a regulated service. We are not registered with the Care Quality Commission, and workers we supply operate within your service, under your policies and your registration. We make no claims on this site about contracts, frameworks or endorsements, and if your procurement needs specifics, ask and we will answer factually.

Request staff, discuss a permanent role, or just call and ask about our compliance process.

General information, not advice.This guide describes good practice rather than legal requirements specific to your service. Your own regulatory, employment and health and safety obligations depend on your registration and circumstances.