I need advice from the STW Hive Mind.
My GF is temping at the moment. She quite likes it at the current place, they say they like her and want to keep her and there are three permanent roles coming up.
The temp agency want to charge the company 20% of her salary to let her go and the company say they can't afford this fee.

Is there anything that can be done?

Is the permanent role the same as she has been doing as a temp? if so I believe this is normal practice and her only way out is to negotiate.

One of the roles is the one she's doing. The other two roles are different. She would have to interview for those though. Does that make a difference?

It is standard practice to charge a fee but 20% of salary of very high unless she is doing something very specialist and highly paid.

I would suggest the company talk to the agent and explains that they simply can't afford the fee but do want to keep her, ideally trying to get a reduced fee. After all, a smaller fee is better than no fee to the agent.

20% of salary is fairly standard for permanent recruitment so is not unfair from temp to perm considering the agency will be losing a client and an earner.

Standard practice regardless of the role she is offered, the charge is for 'the introduction'.

Mind you I wish I could get away with 20%, tell the company to negotiate the agency down to 10%.

BigJohn – Member

20% of salary is fairly standard for permanent recruitment so is not unfair from temp to perm considering the agency will be losing a client and an earner.

Average is 15% in Bristol.

Thanks all.
She's going to talk to her boss again tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

Is the 20% in the contract or just word of mouth from the agency? Worth checking as contracts change all the time.

My gf was laid off by the company she was temping for, who then offered her a graduate role exactly 14 weeks and one day after they laid her off. the cut off point for agency fee, (which was 14% of new start salary iirc) was 14 weeks…

Depends how much they like her and she likes the job: if they use enough of the temp agency, they could say "well, **** you, if you want to charge us the full 20%, we'll never use you again, so make it 10%". Or she could say "I'll work at 90% of the salary for the first year so that the company effectively only pays 10%"…bit of a kick for her but maybe worth it for a good job that she likes?

Have seen a situation where the 'salary' they offered mysteriously was quite low and then made up later in the year with a large bonus which for some reason wasn;t covered under the %age fee. And by low I mean ridiculously low so that it was a large 2 fingers to the agency who had stuck firm on their margin. They also lost all the temp roles as well so bad business. Negotiate, look at the ts and cs carefully and see if this will work, and make sure the bonus is in writing of course 😆

My GF is temping at the moment. She quite likes it at the current place, they say they like her and want to keep her and there are three permanent roles coming up.

If they openly advertise the roles and interview applicants then the agency will get nothing (as a right) but of course this has the risk that a better applicant will apply and get the job.

Otherwise the agency will probably have covered the 'introduction fee' as part of their terms and conditions as they have a business to run.

This of course leads to the moral issue of those employers which go through the motion of advertise/shortlist/interview when there is already a choosen one. It happens and should not be allowed preferrably with a criminal penalty attached to stop repeated offenders.