Staffing Agency and Client Responsibilities: Who Owns Each Hiring Step

Monday, mid-afternoon. An agency account manager and a client's site lead are on a call about the morning. Two new starters arrived an hour late. On Friday, the site had moved their start time.

"I told your planner on Friday," says the site lead.

"Your team leader was going to message them," says the account manager. "He has their numbers."

Both are telling the truth about what they did. Neither of them owned the message.

This article shows how an agency and its client can stop that from happening: the five things to agree for each step, an example agreement you can adapt, the steps that should stay fixed, and a way to put it in place together and check after 30 days whether it works.

Why do handovers between agency and client go wrong?

Because the owner, the system and the rules change at once. When a candidate moves from the agency to the client site, Radius Hire's 2026 research paper on frontline hiring handoffs puts it like this: "the person responsible, the system and the legal duties all change at once."

Inside one company, a missed step has a manager above it. Between two companies, it can sit in the gap. Each side can point to the other, and both can be partly right.

The paper's view is that the costliest handoffs usually sit between agency and client. Its example hire, invented to show the problem, has eight handoffs. Two of them cross that line directly. The client's interviewer gets only a CV from the agency's screening call. And on the first day, the client's security desk has no name list and no time planned for the identity check.

The paper's first rule for better handoffs is "one named owner at every moment", with agency and client agreeing in writing who owns each handoff. It ends its list of fixes for the example hire with this: "None of these changes needs a particular product. Most need the agency and the client to agree who owns each handoff." We agree. The written agreement with the client is the fix. Everything else supports it.

Is owning a step the same as deciding who to hire?

No, they are two different agreements. The paper describes four things that move at every handoff: information, responsibility, decision rights and the candidate's interest. Two of them matter here:

This article is about responsibility. Who makes the final hiring decision, and how that person stays in charge when tools are involved, is covered in The Tool Should Never Be the One Saying No.

The paper defines an owner as "the one named person responsible for the candidate at a given moment, including when the next step is late". Three words in that definition do the work.

One. Not two people who each think the other has it, as in the opening scene.

Named. Not "the agency", "the client" or "the planning team". A person, with a stand-in for when they are away. A team cannot be told that a deadline was missed; a person can.

Late. The owner stays responsible when the step runs over. That is when ownership matters most.

How should staffing agency responsibilities and client responsibilities be divided?

Step by step, using the same five fields for every step. They come from the "fix" part of the paper's audit worksheet, where each priority handoff gets a single owner, a time limit, the minimum information to transfer, what the candidate is told, and who is told if the deadline is missed.

The worksheet adds one more date: when to measure again. The paper suggests 30 days after the fixes go live, on the same number of candidates.

What does an agency and client responsibility agreement look like?

Here is an example for one role at one site. It follows the steps in the paper's example hire, from the screening call to the team leader. Replace every entry with what fits your own process.

Three notes on the table.

The "change" row is easy to forget. It is the step that failed in the opening scene. A start time that changes on a Friday needs one owner as much as the first message did.

Some cells say "Agree your own" on purpose. The paper's example gives a time limit for document checks and approvals, and it advises sending the first-day details the day before. The other limits depend on your volumes and your client.

The first-day row is built around a check the client does itself. The agreement covers how to prepare it: the name list, start time and a slot for the check, sent the day before, so the check takes minutes at the gate.

Want the research behind this article? The Radius Papers 02: The Hidden Cost of Frontline Hiring is Radius Hire's white paper for operations directors, HR managers, recruitment leaders and staffing agencies hiring frontline workers in the Netherlands. It shows where candidates and recruiter hours are lost between application and first shift. Enter your name and work email, choose English or Dutch, and Radius emails it to you: Get The Radius Papers 02.

Which steps should stay fixed in the agreement?

Checks the client must do itself stay with the client. Write them into the agreement as fixed client steps, so nobody tries to hand them over, and agree how the agency helps prepare them.

The client's own identity check. Dutch government guidance (Rijksoverheid) says a company that hires an agency worker must check the worker's original identity document itself before work starts. The same guidance says a driving licence does not count for this check, because it shows no nationality. So the agency's start message should tell the starter which document to bring. For the wider picture, see which identity, right to work and certificate checks can happen before the offer.

Other checks and records. Some steps, such as work permit checks, records of which agency supplied each worker, and who holds candidate data and copies of identity documents, depend on the rules that apply to your set-up. Agree in writing who prepares what, and check the current rules with your legal adviser. Treat who holds candidate data as a separate agreement from who owns each step. For the checks a hirer of agency workers must do itself, see the hirer's own checks, chain liability and Wav fines.

How do agency and client agree who owns each step?

Start with one role at one site, and do it together. The paper's audit is built to be run by two people: a recruitment lead and an operations lead. In agency work, it suggests one from the agency and one from the client.

The paper has no data on which steps between agency and client go wrong most often. Your own map will show you: look for steps where the owner is a team, a company or two names.

What should happen when a deadline is missed?

The named person is told, the same day. That is the whole point of the fifth field. Three habits keep it from turning into a blame exercise.

No reply does not mean "received". That is one of the paper's rules. If the client's site lead has not confirmed the name list, the agency planner treats it as not sent and follows up. The same applies in the other direction.

The stand-in acts. If the owner is away, the stand-in named in the agreement does the step. Nobody waits for the owner to come back.

Fix the step, not the person. The paper is clear that its audit scores rate handoffs, not people. Use missed deadlines the same way: to find the steps that need a better owner, a better time limit or better information.

If you plan a system that tracks how fast each person acts on a handoff, involve your works council early and check with your adviser what is needed.

How Radius helps

Radius Hire is an AI hiring platform for frontline roles, built in Amsterdam for staffing agencies and employers who hire for the work floor. It is built to source, interview and verify applicants, while a person makes every hiring decision.

For agencies, Radius is built to run every client's roles in one workspace, with permissions per team, and to keep messages, notes, the interview and contracts on one candidate record that each step reads from. Each verification check keeps its source and its date, which helps when a client asks how a placement was screened. Who owns each step is still an agreement between you and your client.