Agency Staff and Contractors

Attendance disputes involving agency and contract staff run across a relationship, and the usual assumptions do not hold.

Who does what

The agency usually employs them and runs payroll.

The client organisation directs the work and holds the attendance record.

Which means the client can identify an anomaly and cannot discipline, and the agency can discipline and cannot see the record.

Agree in the commercial contract who investigates, who shares what, and on what basis — before an incident rather than during one.

The disclosure problem

Sending a client's attendance records to an agency is a disclosure of personal data about a worker to another organisation.

It needs a basis and a stated purpose, and it should be the specific records at issue rather than a file.

Which is another argument for defining this in advance, because the temptation during an incident is to forward everything.

The status question

Requiring a self-employed contractor to clock in on your system, to your schedule, with your tolerance, is control over how and when work is done.

Which is a status indicator with consequences in employment rights and tax.

Applying a disciplinary process to a contractor is a stronger indicator still.

Where the relationship is commercial, the response to poor attendance is a commercial one — the contract, not a warning letter.

What the client actually needs

That the hours invoiced were worked.

Which is a site-level attendance record, verified against the invoice.

Not: a disciplinary case against an individual the client does not employ.

Raise it with the agency as a supply issue, which is both cleaner and the arrangement the contract probably already provides for.

Where it goes wrong

A client investigating an agency worker directly, which crosses the relationship and the employment boundary at once.

Attendance data shared as a spreadsheet rather than the specific records.

A pattern across the agency's staff treated as individual conduct when it is a supply or briefing problem.

The practical arrangement

One clock-in method at the site, supplied by the site.

Records exported to the agency for payroll.

Anomalies raised with the agency, scoped to the shift in question.

And a contract clause covering all of it, which is fifteen minutes of drafting and prevents the whole category.

Put it in the contract

Fifteen minutes of drafting that prevents the whole category.

Who investigates, who discloses what, and on what basis.

Which records are shared, scoped to the shift rather than the person.

How the client raises a concern — as a supply issue with the agency, not as a disciplinary matter directly.

Agreed before an incident, because during one the temptation is to forward everything.

A practical configuration prompt

During configuration, use freelancer time tracking solution to prompt questions about identifiers, ownership and output. Treat the page as a starting point and document each assumption.