Occupational safety for staffing and temporary work

• Staffing & temp agencies

Important: Your own branch office is an office business. The workers you place, however, work in other companies, often in areas with a considerably higher level of risk. For that part the support group is not automatically III, and the assessment follows the activities at the hirer.

What is different here

Two businesses, one responsibility. The workers are deployed at the hirer but employed by you. Occupational safety splits accordingly, and it is exactly at that interface that gaps appear.

The four points that matter

• Who is responsible for what. During the assignment the hirer carries responsibility for occupational safety at the workplace (section 11 paragraph 6 AÜG). The agency remains the employer and must inform workers about the hazards and protective measures before the assignment. Both have to be evidenced.
• Training before the assignment. Your general training and the hirer's workplace-specific training are two different things. Documenting only one of them leaves a gap.
• Personal protective equipment. Who supplies the equipment has to be settled in the contract. Unsettled means, in practice, that nobody supplies it and people work without.
• Changing places of work. With frequently changing assignments the number of required briefings grows quickly. Without a fixed routine before every assignment it stays incomplete.

What a walkthrough typically turns up

In the branch office itself the usual office topics apply. The findings are in the paperwork: there is no evidence that workers were informed about the specific hazards of the assignment beforehand, no confirmation from the hirer about their own briefing, and no arrangement in the supply contract for who provides protective equipment.

What that means for safety training

What works in practice is a two-stage process. Stage one runs at your end, before every assignment, covering the hazards and measures of that specific placement and the reporting route after an accident. Stage two runs at the hirer, at the workplace. Both are documented, and the confirmation from stage two belongs in your file, not only in theirs.

Related

• External occupational safety specialist: the scope under section 6 ASiG, the three support models compared and how the number of hours is calculated.
• Regions: an occupational safety specialist on site in eight regions across Germany, with the responsible VBG district office for each.
• Occupational safety by sector: what sets law firms, IT, agencies, real estate, associations, financial services and other business types apart.
• Duties quick-check: which duties apply at your headcount, from the occupational safety committee through safety officers to the end of the Unternehmermodell.
• Support-hours calculator: your support hours under DGUV Regulation 2, including the split between specialist and physician. The cost logic is explained in What does a safety specialist cost?
• Risk assessment in the office and safety training in the office: the two duties that apply to every office business from the first employee.
• Services overview: the complete scope required by the ASiG and DGUV Regulation 2 in one contract, with every sector and location we cover.

Frequently asked questions