Client organizations and the management of professional agency work: The case of English health and social care

• Author: Kim Hoque,Chris Lonsdale,Ian Kirkpatrick
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21933
• Date: 01 January 2019
• Published date: 01 January 2019

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Client organizations and the management of professional

agency work: The case of English health and social care

Ian Kirkpatrick

1

| Kim Hoque

1

| Chris Lonsdale

2

1

Warwick Business School, University of

Warwick, Coventry, UK

2

Business School, University of Birmingham,

Birmingham, UK

Correspondence

Ian Kirkpatrick, Warwick Business School,

The University of Warwick, Coventry CV4

7AL, UK.

Email: ian.kirkpatrick@wbs.ac.uk

A growing reliance on agency workers can lead to significant risks for client organizations, espe-

cially in core organizational roles. It has been suggested while these risk can be mitigated

through investments in human resource management (HRM) directed at agency workers, in

reality these will be hard to implement. This article draws upon Lepak and Snell's (1999) HR

architecture model and uses a comparative case study method to explore this issue, focusing on

agency working in core nursing and qualified social worker roles. The findings illustrate how

client organizations can become more involved in the management of agency workers than has

previously been acknowledged. Our analysis also identifies the conditions that shape this client-

side involvement, including the nature of agency worker contracts, the role of temporary work

agencies, competing organizational cost-control priorities, and perceptions of the regulatory

context. These conditions are brought together in a general model for understandingthe largely

neglected role that client organizations play in the HR management of agency workers.

KEYWORDS

agency working, health, HR architecture, professions, public services, social care, temporary

work agencies

1|INTRODUCTION

In most developed economies, a well-documented trend in recent

years has been the increase in job roles filled through temporary work

agencies (TWAs) (Cappelli & Keller, 2013; Voss et al., 2013). This is

often viewed as positive for employers (Galais & Moser, 2009; Osno-

witz, 2010), with agency workers being used to adjust to tight labor

markets (Houseman, Kallenberg, & Erickcer, 2003) and provide a way

of acquiring specialist skills and knowledge (Matusik & Hill, 1998).

Indeed, it is argued by importing “waves of fresh ideas and

approaches”agency workers may “help prevent the organization

becoming insular and complacent…” (Storey, Quintas, Taylor, & Fowle,

2002, p. 4). At the same time, however, an increasing reliance on

agency workers is not without certain risks for employers (Bidwell,

2009; Bonet, Cappelli, & Hamori, 2013). As with other forms of out-

sourced labor, there may be “particular complexities in supervisory,

reporting, and other interpersonal relationships that may lead to prob-

lems including turnover, lack of loyalty, service discontinuities, and

poor service quality”(Fischer, Wasserman, Wolf, & Wears,

2008, p. 502).

This raises the question of how organizations that use agency

workers should respond to these risks. As Torka (2011) argues, the

treatment and support agency workers receive strongly influence their

commitment and performance. This, in turn, has led to the suggestion

that client organizations themselves might become more involved in

the human resource management (HRM) of their agency workforce

(Koene, Garsten, & Galais, 2014; Zimmerman, Gavrilova-Aguilar, &

Cullum, 2013). Doing so, it is argued, will help to strengthen “recipro-

cal commitment obligations”(Schlossler, Templer, & Ghanam, 2006,

p. 299) between client organizations and agency workers and thereby

avoid some of the risks associated with “socially thin”employment

relationships (Koene & van Riemsdijk, 2005, p. 84).

Such client-side interventions are deemed especially important

when agency workers are deployed in “inner core”roles (Peel & Box-

all, 2005) that generate a high value for organizations (Lepak & Snell,

1999). In these situations, client organizations may be exposed to

increased risks arising from agency workers' lack of organization-

specific knowledge (Hoque & Kirkpatrick, 2008) and lack of willing-

ness to engage in “work related helping behaviours”(Broschak &

Davis-Blake, 2006). In theory, managing risk in these situations may

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.21933

Hum Resour Manage. 2019;58:71–84. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrm © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 71