HR, safety and compliance for labour hire

Potentially, yes. Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and the ACT each operate their own labour hire licensing scheme, and holding a licence in one doesn’t automatically cover placements in another. If you supply workers across state lines, you need to check the licensing requirements in each jurisdiction your workers are placed in, not just where your business is registered. 

Hosts are also prohibited from engaging an unlicensed provider in these jurisdictions, which means your licensing status directly affects your clients’ willingness and legal ability to use you. Letting a licence lapse during renewal can mean placements made during that gap were technically unlicensed supply. 

Our HR advisors can review your current licensing status against every jurisdiction you operate in and flag any gaps before they become a compliance failure. 

Both. Under work health and safety laws, the labour hire provider and the host business each hold a duty of care for the same worker at the same time, and neither can contract out of it. 

In practice, this means: 

the host is responsible for the safety of the physical work environment and site-specific hazards; 

the provider is responsible for ensuring the worker is inducted, trained and fit for the role they’re placed into; 

both parties share responsibility for consultation, incident reporting and coordinating controls. 

Regulators assess what both parties did, not just the host, when an incident occurs. A folder of generic inductions that doesn’t reflect what happens at each specific host site won’t hold up under scrutiny. Our WHS consultants build coordination frameworks that clarify exactly where your obligations start and the host’s begin. 

Each host site can bring its own Modern Award, classification structure and penalty rate obligations, and the correct award needs to be assessed at the point of placement, not applied as a generic ‘labour hire rate’ across the board. 

The Workforce Pulse 2026 found that 87 per cent of businesses surveyed are confident their payroll is accurate, yet 42 per cent have found an error at some point. In a labour hire context, an award error at one placement tends to repeat every time that worker is placed again, so the exposure compounds faster than in a single-award business. 

foundU, powered by Citation Group, applies automated award interpretation at the point of timesheet approval, so the correct award, classification and penalty rates are applied for the specific placement, not a default rate across your whole workforce. 

Increasingly, yes, and for larger hosts and government panels, it’s becoming a prerequisite rather than a differentiator. 

ISO 45001 (safety management) demonstrates to hosts that your safety systems meet an independently verified standard, which matters heavily given the shared duty of care structure in labour hire. ISO 9001 (quality management) signals that your placement, screening and compliance processes are consistent and documented. ISO 27001 (information security) is becoming more relevant as worker and client data moves between provider and host systems. 

The Workforce Pulse 2026 found that 76 per cent of medium businesses agree certification matters, but fewer than half hold it. In labour hire, that gap can be the difference between qualifying for a tender and being excluded from it before you’re assessed on price. 

If a placement structured as independent contracting is found to actually be an employment relationship, the business engaging that worker becomes liable for all unpaid Award entitlements from the start of the arrangement, including wages, leave and superannuation, plus Fair Work Act penalties per contravention. 

Since the 2024 independent contracting reforms, the multi-factor test looks at the real nature of the working relationship, not the label in the contract. Control over how and when work is performed, whether the worker can subdelegate, and whether they carry genuine financial risk all matter more than an ABN or an invoice. 

A Citation Group HR Compliance Audit reviews your current placement arrangements against the current test and tells you where you stand before a claim does.