Managers at one of the UK’s biggest providers of agency health workers are pressured into imposing £50 fines on employees who phone in sick as part of a “vicious” and “cut-throat” sales-driven culture, a whistleblower has claimed.

A Guardian investigation revealed how Newcross Healthcare, which made £21m in pre-tax profits in 2017, not only failed to give sick pay to carers or nurses but also issued punitive fines when unwell workers cancelled shifts without 24 hours’ notice.

Now a whistleblower who worked as a business centre manager for the firm has described an intense sales environment at the company, which employs 7,000 staff providing temporary nurses and care workers for hospitals and residential care homes.

The whistleblower, who quit the firm in 2018, alleges:

Regional managers pressured branches to impose fines on sick employees, even if they knew absences were genuine.

Care homes were forced to send home sick agency staff who had turned up because they were afraid of being docked wages.

Managers were put up in a five-star hotel in Gibraltar each year for a “lavish” sales bash where awards would be given out.

Managers were tasked with repeatedly cold-calling care and nursing homes to book in shifts for agency workers, with a target of achieving 3,000 hours of shifts a week.

The industry watchdog, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), has said it has contacted Newcross and is considering taking action. It said: “It is essential that providers take all necessary steps to ensure that people receiving care are not put at risk.”

The whistleblower, who did not wish to be named, was one of around 60 business centre managers at branches around the country tasked with filling thousands of hours of shifts a week for agency nurses and carers supplied to local homes and hospitals.

He described the firm as vicious and cut-throat and said he quit after becoming disgusted with the culture, which he said was misrepresented when he took up the job.

“We were targeted each week as to how many hours we would fill with our staff. I was up to about 3,000 or so hours a week to fill across all my staff,” he said.

“I got on well with my staff and my team but the regional manager … the pressure was quite ferocious. They get heavily targeted to make sure they’re filling their quota. I found myself getting to the stage that when someone was calling up saying ‘I can’t do that shift you’ve put me down for next week’, feeling really agitated, thinking: I’m going to have to fill this shift otherwise I’m going to get it in the neck.”

He estimated he handed out about 10 £50 fines a month to workers who cancelled shifts. If this number was replicated across the firm’s various branches, it would mean workers were being fined hundreds of times a month.

The whistleblower said: “Even if it was someone I had a good working relationship with and knew that their absence was a genuine one, we would still look to hit them with the £50. If we didn’t I would be questioned as to why I didn’t do it and I would have to have a good reason why I didn’t do it. So I felt under pressure to enforce that.”

On some occasions care home managers would send Newcross workers home after they had turned up sick because they did not want to be docked wages. The source said: “I would sometimes have the managers phoning up saying, ‘Look, I’ve sent them home but they’re still to get paid because they were here, they’re worried they’re going to lose money from it.’”

Regional managers put pressure on branch managers to fill shifts and impose fines to ensure they were not missed, the source said.

“I’d been there for a few weeks and it became quite apparent to me that I was there to manage the healthcare workers who were going out to sites, enforcing the reduction of salary for missing of appointments regardless of the scenario,” he said.

“For me, if people were phoning up and saying they were unwell, that’s not a planned absence. If they’re unwell, they’re unwell. However, there was no capacity for me to be able to waiver that, or if I did waiver it, as the manager, I had to give a full explanation to why I was going to waive it.”

Branch managers who succeeded in cajoling their staff to fill shifts were rewarded handsomely with a lavish annual April bash in the tax haven of Gibraltar, where Newcross’s owners are based.

He said: “The business centre managers would be taken off to Gibraltar for the annual get-together where it was very lavish, everything was paid for. It would be a great slap-on-the-back chance for everyone to say look at our figures. Awards would be given out for the people who had taken the most amount of hours.

“Everyone was taken to Gibraltar, there was a five-star hotel. Everyone was put up there for a few nights and went to the casino. Whereas the carers don’t get to participate in anything like that. They say they’re employees of Newcross but they’re just treated like agency staff.”

Newcross has said it will scrap the £50 charge in April but it has faced calls from the shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, to end it immediately.

Debbie Westhead, the CQC’s interim chief inspector of adult social care, said: “CQC will always listen and act when concerns about poor care are raised with us. We have contacted Newcross about this matter and are considering if there are any further steps we need to take. It is essential that providers take all necessary steps to ensure that people receiving care are not put at risk.”

Newcross did not respond to repeated requests for comment.