Employer of Record: 12 Health and Safety Duties It Does Not Cover
Hiring through an employer of record has become the default way for technology and professional firms to put people into new countries quickly. No entity, no local payroll build, somebody hired in a fortnight.
It works well for what it is designed to do. The difficulty is what people assume it covers.
An EOR is the legal employer for employment administration purposes. It does not follow that every duty owed to that person sits with the EOR, and in most jurisdictions occupational safety duties attach substantially to whoever directs the work, which is you.
Twelve duties worth establishing before you assume otherwise.
1. What an EOR typically does and does not do
Start with the commercial reality.
An EOR typically handles the employment contract, payroll, tax and social contributions, statutory benefits and employment law compliance in the host country.
What it usually does not do is assess the risks of the work you direct, provide equipment for the way you have designed the role, manage working patterns you set, or hold the occupational safety appointments that several jurisdictions require.
Read the agreement. Most set out what the EOR is responsible for, and safety is frequently absent or heavily qualified.
2. Direction and control decide more than the contract
The principle that runs through this whole subject.
Across the jurisdictions covered in this series, safety duties consistently follow control over the work, not the label on the employment contract. The organisation that decides what is done, when, at what pace and with what equipment is the organisation shaping the risk.
British law follows the same logic. Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 places duties on employers toward people who are not their employees but are affected by the conduct of their undertaking.
3. The agency worker pattern is the closest analogy
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Where a domestic parallel helps.
Regulation 15 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires the user of a temporary worker to provide the employment business with comprehensible information on the qualifications and skills required to work safely and the specific features of the job affecting health and safety. Regulation 12 requires information to be given to the employers of visiting workers.
The duty does not sit only with the entity issuing the contract. Several jurisdictions apply the same logic expressly: Lithuania requires the receiving undertaking to instruct a temporary worker at the specific workplace even where their own employer has done so, and Finland requires the user undertaking to attend particularly to orientation.
4. Somebody's home is now a workplace
The practical reality of most EOR hires, and the duty people forget entirely.
EOR hires are usually remote. That means the workplace is a home in a country where you have no presence, with a desk and chair you did not provide and have never seen.
Home working assessment requirements vary. Several European jurisdictions address remote work expressly and some require the employer to contribute to equipment or costs. A group applying a British home-working questionnaire across eight countries has applied one standard to eight different requirements.
5. Appointment duties can attach from the first employee
The threshold that catches groups out repeatedly.
This series has documented jurisdictions where safety appointments attach from employee one: Belgium requires an internal prevention service with a named prevention adviser and, in practice, affiliation with an approved external service. Bulgaria, Slovakia and Greece attach duties at very low headcount. Poland requires initial training and a medical certificate before somebody may be admitted to work.
Whether the EOR holds those appointments for your people is a question to ask explicitly. In many arrangements it does not, because the appointment relates to a workplace and undertaking rather than to a payroll.
6. Occupational health is compulsory in a great many countries
The single largest gap in most EOR arrangements.
Japan requires an annual medical examination for every regularly employed worker, from the first hire, with the employer bearing the cost. Poland requires a medical certificate before admission to work. Finland delivers occupational health through compulsory provision. Estonia triggers health checks for display screen work and sustained sitting. Lithuania requires checks where the risk assessment indicates.
These are not optional benefits. They are conditions of lawful employment in those countries, and somebody has to arrange and pay for them.
7. Equipment and display screen provision
Who buys the monitor, and who assesses the setup.
Where a role involves substantial screen work, most European jurisdictions impose assessment and provision duties deriving from the same directive, with national variations covering eye tests, equipment and training.
In practice the EOR rarely provides equipment. The hiring company usually does, informally, via an expense policy. That is provision without assessment, which is the wrong half.
8. Working time and patterns are yours
Because you set them.
Daily and weekly limits, rest periods, night work provisions and on-call arrangements differ sharply by country, and several jurisdictions cap daily hours directly rather than relying on weekly averaging.
An on-call rota designed around a British or American baseline, applied to somebody employed in a country with a stricter daily limit, is a compliance problem created by the hiring company rather than the EOR.
9. Psychosocial duties apply, and the group sets the pressure
A category where the hiring company is unambiguously the source.
France, Sweden, Denmark, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Lithuania and Slovenia all treat organisational working conditions as a regulated matter. Workload, pace, autonomy, monitoring and how change is handled are all set by the team the person works in, not by their EOR.
10. Incident reporting: who reports, to whom, and by when
The question nobody asks until it matters.
Reporting categories and deadlines differ, and several are short. Kuwait requires immediate reporting and includes accidents travelling to and from work. Croatia requires a committee session within two working days of a fatality. Slovakia requires a written record within eight days with the injured person participating.
If somebody employed through an EOR is injured, establish in advance who files, on what information, and within what period. The EOR may hold the obligation and will need facts only you have.
11. Insurance and liability are not one thing
Worth confirming rather than assuming.
Employer's liability or its local equivalent generally follows the employment relationship, and in many countries operates through a compulsory state scheme funded by employer contributions rather than commercial insurance.
That does not resolve your own exposure as the organisation directing the work, particularly where an incident arises from how the work was designed. Take local advice on where liability sits in each country you hire into.
12. What to ask your EOR, in writing
The practical close, and it is a short list.
Ask which occupational safety duties they perform and which they do not. Whether they hold any required safety appointments for your people. Whether occupational health examinations are arranged and who pays. What home working assessment they carry out, if any. Who provides and assesses equipment. Who reports an incident, to whom, and by when. And what they require from you in order to do any of it.
Get the answers in writing before you hire, not after an incident. A clear answer of "we do not do that" is more useful than an assumption that they do.
The 12, in short
| Duty | Usually the EOR | Usually still yours |
|---|---|---|
| Contract, payroll, tax | Yes | No |
| Risk assessment of the work | No | Yes |
| Safety appointments | Sometimes | Check explicitly |
| Home workplace assessment | Rarely | Yes |
| Occupational health | Sometimes | Check and fund |
| Equipment and screens | Rarely | Yes |
| Working time and rota | No | Yes |
| Psychosocial conditions | No | Yes |
| Incident reporting | Often files | Supplies the facts |
| Statutory insurance | Usually | Your own exposure remains |
The middle column is shorter than most buyers expect, and the right-hand column is the reason an EOR does not remove the need for a view of each country's requirements.
The pattern behind all twelve
Employment administration and occupational safety are different regimes, discharged by different parties, and outsourcing the first does not transfer the second.
That is the same conclusion this series reached on agency workers, contractors and outsourced services. The organisation that controls the work carries duties toward the people doing it, whoever issues their payslip.
Holding each country's requirements, and which party discharges each one, in a single register is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more together than either alone, and periodic health and safety audits establish which duties nobody is performing. The ILO publishes the international standards most national frameworks align to.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite establishes what each country actually requires for the people you have hired there, and which of those duties your EOR is performing. That is usually a short exercise with a clear output, and it is not something an EOR agreement answers. We support 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years.
Our health and safety consultants work extensively with IT and software, AI and data, legal and insurance organisations, which hire across borders faster than any other sectors we work with.
Our global health and safety consultants coordinate locally qualified practitioners in each country, and our international health and safety consultants keep that current as you add markets.
If you have people in countries where you hold no entity and nobody has established what is owed to them, a free gap analysis is the right place to start.
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Written by
Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
