Staffing Executive Regulatory Outlook (SERO) is a new tool launched by the World Employment Confederation (WEC) to assess the potential impact of regulatory changes on the staffing industry.

The survey covers 27 different national federations and shows that overall regulatory outlook in the period between Q2 2022 and Q4 2022 is negative in 15 countries, positive in six countries and neutral in six countries.

For a comparison, in the previous edition, the result was negative in 13 countries (with the most negative impact in Chile, Sweden, Norway and Russia), neutral in 10 countries and positive in five (especially in Italy and Spain).

These are the main considerations that led to the results mentioned above:

- in Belgium, a new legislation on tax adjustments increases the costs for temporary agency work and there are new obligations linked to the transposition of EU Directives;

- In Germany, new general working conditions and the transposition of an EU Directive are expected to have a mostly negative impact. We have reported on this issue in this article. 

- In Sweden labour contracts in the agency work sector (already reported for the previous edition of the Staffing Executive Regulatory Outlook) are confirmed as a big challenge

- In India, labour laws have been recently simplified, contributing to a better working environment, benefiting the staffing sector.

- In Italy, an amendment to the law on agency work postpones to 30 June 2024 the application of maximum length of assignments of 24 months for fixed-term missions for workers hired on a permanent basis by the temporary work agencies.

- finally, in Mexico positive developments are expected in the upcoming regulations, with benefits also for the staffing industry.