Recruitment Agencies vs Zero Hour Contracts: What's The Difference?

People can often confuse zero hour contracts with agency work, but there is a difference between the two…

How do zero hour contracts work?

Zero hour contracts are used for casual contracts, as a zero hour worker you are not contracted to any minimum hours. They are usually used for ‘piece work’ or ‘on-call work’, some companies can’t predict their workload so they will have zero hour workers at their disposal that they can call upon workers at the last minute.

For a zero hour contracted worker, this means:

They are on call to work when you need them
You do not have to give them work
They do not have to do work when asked

You cannot stop a zero hour worker from getting work elsewhere. However, this could potentially cause an issue for you if you were to get a second job, as you would have to prioritise one over the other.

What are zero hour contract workers entitled to?

Statutory annual leave
National Minimum Wage in the same way as regular workers

(Source: Gov.uk)

How do Recruitment Agencies work?

With agency work, there are instances where a company may contact us for ad hoc work, to fill an odd shift here or there to cover holiday for example. However these are the main differences between a zero hour contract and an agency contract:

At an agency you will receive a different contract (called a “confirmation of assignment”) for each placement
You know what you’re signing up for, as you will be placed into one work placement and you will only work that one job
You will stay working at the same company, unless the company no longer require extra agency workers
On a zero hour contract if the company is going into a quieter period they may reduce your hours from 8 per day to 4 per day for example, where as with an agency if you are no longer required at the company you are placed with, rather than working reduced hours we can place you into another full time role else where
At Essential Recruitment, 97% of our current vacancies require you to work full time hours, so once you were placed into the role, if the working hours are 8 hours a day, you would get a consistent 8 hours per day
Another major difference between a zero contract and agency work is that the majority of our work is long term with 25% of placements on an ongoing basis and 47% on a temp to perm contract (these are worked within a 12-26 week period before the company offers you a permanent contract)

Read about the contracts we recruit for: