Staffing Agency vs Direct Hire for Frontline Roles: How Employers Decide

Every autumn, site managers ask the same question: call the agency for the peak, or recruit ourselves? This article gives operations and HR leads in the Netherlands four questions to decide per role, a worked cost calculation, the checks Dutch law leaves with you, and the rule changes of 2027 and 2028.

Both routes recruit from the same tight market. CBS, the Dutch statistics office, counted 98 open vacancies per 100 unemployed people on average in 2025 (Netherlands). In the same year, 7 percent of employee jobs were at a staffing agency, down from nearly 10 percent in 2018 [1].

What is the difference between a staffing agency and direct hiring?

With an agency, the agency employs the worker; with direct hiring, you do.

Dutch law calls the agency contract an uitzendovereenkomst. The agency employs the worker and places them with a third party, the hirer (inlener in Dutch), who directs the work (Civil Code, Article 7:690) [2]. With direct hiring you recruit, sign the contract, run payroll and carry the contract risk yourself.

This article compares the first and the last route.

When does a staffing agency make sense for frontline roles?

When demand is uncertain, starts are urgent, or your own recruiting cannot keep up.

Speed only helps if people turn up and stay, so ask the agency for its first shift show up and early leaver rates on roles like yours, and measure both yourself.

When is direct hiring the better choice?

When the role is stable, repeats every month and you want people to stay.

In return you take on the recruiting, contracts, payroll, every check and the chain rule. Under Article 7:668a of the Civil Code, the last fixed term contract becomes permanent once more than three follow each other, or once together they pass 36 months, counting gaps of six months or less [2]. A collective agreement can raise those limits to six contracts and 48 months for certain jobs. From 1 January 2028, the Wet meer zekerheid flexwerkers (Stb. 2026, 205) changes these rules: for most workers a chain is broken only by a gap of more than 36 months instead of six, and the 26 week agency phase becomes 52 weeks. Transitional rules keep the six month gap for contracts concluded before that date [2][14].

Staffing agency vs direct hire: how do you decide, role by role?

Ask four questions per role and note which way each answer points.

A practical rule: if two or more answers point to an agency, use one for that role or for its peak. Otherwise, hire directly.

Illustrative example. A distribution centre employs 40 order pickers all year, needs 25 more from October to December depending on parcel volumes, and needs 4 reach truck drivers with a valid certificate. The site has one HR adviser. The outcome: hire the 40 directly, take the 25 through an agency, and hire the drivers directly, because the certificate check and the training are worth owning.

Hiring for your own sites? See how Radius Hire works for companies hiring directly. Recruiting for clients? See Radius for agencies.

What does each route cost per hour, and when does direct hiring pay off?

Once a person works enough hours to repay your hiring cost.

Under Article 8 of the Waadi, the Dutch law on labour intermediaries, an agency worker is entitled to at least the same pay and allowances as your own employees in equal or equivalent jobs, and to the same rules on working hours, overtime, rest, night work and holidays that your collective agreement or similar binding rules set [3]. Today a collective agreement can set other terms (Article 8(4)). From 31 December 2026, an adopted amendment allows this only in a collective agreement that applies to the agency, and only if the overall package stays at least equivalent [3][14]. Collective agreements for temporary agency work regulate their wages [9]. So the price gap is mostly the agency's rate on top of the wage, which pays for recruiting, employment, payroll, the agency's risk and its margin.

Illustrative example. The figures are assumptions chosen to show the method, not market rates.

On these assumptions, a person you need for more than about 10 weeks is cheaper to hire directly. If every direct hire stayed, the break even would drop to 250 hours, under 8 weeks: early leavers make direct hiring more expensive.

The formula leaves out paid hours without work, which an agency carries within its contract terms, and the cost of an empty shift when nobody turns up. Add them if they matter at your site. For a full model built on your own figures, see The Cost of a Frontline Hire in the Netherlands.

Who owns which check on each route?

The agency takes on the employer's checks, but some checks stay with you.

The agency, as employer, establishes the worker's identity before the placement and keeps a copy of the ID (Waadi, Article 7c) [3]. Government guidance says that you, as hirer, check the original ID before work starts and record the worker's details. Because you are not the employer, you keep no copy, except for workers from outside the EU, the EEA and Switzerland [8].

The hirer cannot step back. The Netherlands Labour Authority says clients must make sure everyone who works for them does so legally, and can be fined if permits further down the chain are not in order [12].

If an agency screens your candidates with an AI tool, ask how candidates are told, who reviews the output and who decides. For the EU rules on AI in hiring, see The EU AI Act and Recruitment.

This is where mixed models usually break. Agency and direct candidates go through different questions, checks and records. A certificate the agency checked sits in its system while the site sees a name on a list, so the check at the gate is rushed or skipped. For checks a direct hire can pass before the offer, see Verifying Frontline Candidates.

What changes for agency hiring in 2027 and 2028?

Using agencies gets a supplier admission check; hiring directly is not affected.

When does mixing both routes make sense?

When a site has a steady base and a peak that swings.

A workable model is a direct core, an agency for the peak, and a route between them. As hirer, you must tell agency workers about vacancies in good time and clearly, so they have the same chance of a permanent contract as your employees (Waadi, Article 8c) [3]. The agency may not stand in the way of the worker taking a job with you after the assignment, though a contract may require a reasonable fee for its placement, recruitment or training services (Waadi, Article 9a) [3].

Our view: the route should change who does the work, never what counts as proof. Use the same interview questions for agency and direct candidates, the same checks before the first shift, and one record a site manager can read without asking who recruited the person. Then compare the routes every quarter on show up for the first shift, early leavers, time from request to start, and recruiter hours per hire.

What should you agree with an agency before the first shift?

Write down who checks what, by when, and where it is recorded.

How Radius helps

Radius Hire is the AI hiring platform for frontline roles, built for employers who hire directly and for staffing agencies that recruit for several clients and sites. It is built to give both routes the same evidence standard.

See Radius for companies or Radius for agencies. Radius is new, so this article explains how the product works rather than claiming results.

Conclusion: decide per role, keep one standard

Agency or direct is a choice per role, and often per season. Count the starts, test how sure the hours are, name an owner for each check, then run the break even calculation with your own figures. Many sites will land on a direct core and an agency peak. What should not differ is the standard: the same questions, the same checks before the first shift, and one record of what was proven and who decided.

This framework does not replace advice on your contracts: sector agreements, posted workers, payrolling and self employed contractors have their own rules.