Temporary agency work

What it means

In agency work the person is the agency’s employee but works at your site. The agency pays the wage and the contributions; you pay an invoice for the assignment.

The law requires the same pay conditions as a comparable employee of your own. If your position sits in a higher difficulty grade, that grade applies to the assigned worker too.

Agency work differs from outsourcing in who directs the work. In an assignment the user employer gives the instructions, and the agency answers for sending the person and paying the wage. In outsourcing the supplier takes over the whole activity with its outcome and manages its own people, and the customer pays for the result rather than for hours worked.

How it works in practice

In your books this is not payroll but a service: an invoice with VAT, no payroll records, no registrations with the insurers. That is the main reason companies use it for seasonal peaks.

An inspection, however, looks at reality: attendance, instructions, who gives orders. If you manage the assigned worker exactly like your own and it runs for years, it is disguised employment.

We check agency invoices against the attendance records kept by the user employer: hours, overtime, premiums for night work and public holidays. The agency bills from the data you send, so an error in the records flows into both the price and the assigned worker’s pay. The cost is booked as a service to the cost centre where the person works.

What to watch out for

The user employer is liable for the assigned worker’s wage if the agency fails to pay it. So before signing, check that the agency holds a valid permit and owes nothing to the insurers.

The second issue is price. The agency invoice carries the wage, contributions, holiday entitlement and the agency’s margin, so an hour of an assigned worker costs more than an hour of your own. When temporary help becomes the permanent setup, the company overpays for years without building know-how in its own team. Once a year it pays to compare the invoices with the total employer cost of an employee.