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If You're Hurt or Unsafe on Assignment, Who Is Responsible?

Often both: federal safety and equal-employment agencies treat the staffing agency and the facility it places you in as sharing responsibility for your safety and for how you are treated. Tell your recruiter and the facility in writing, and for an injury, your state's workers' compensation board is the official place to start.

By ProTherapy Staffing, published October 22, 2026.

Who is your employer when an agency places you at a facility?

On paper, the agency: it hires you, runs payroll and carries the insurance. Day to day, the facility directs your work. Federal agencies look at both. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration says: “The staffing agency and the staffing agency’s client (the host employer) are joint employers of temporary workers and, therefore, both are responsible for providing and maintaining a safe work environment for those workers.” OSHA uses the term for workers “supplied to a host employer and paid by a staffing agency, whether or not the job is actually temporary” (OSHA: protecting temporary workers).

That is the starting point for everything below. Two organizations have duties to you, and it is reasonable to expect both of them to act.

What happens if you're injured on a travel assignment?

Report the injury to the facility the way it requires, and to your recruiter the same day, in writing, with the date, time, place and what happened. Ask the agency how it handles workers' compensation claims and who its insurance carrier is.

Workers' compensation is run by the states. The U.S. Department of Labor says: “Individuals injured on the job while employed by private companies or state and local government agencies should contact their state workers' compensation board” (DOL: workers' compensation). For a traveler, the state where you were hurt may not be your home state or the state where the agency is based, so ask which state's system the claim goes through and read that board's rules on reporting.

What if the facility puts you in unsafe conditions?

OSHA says staffing agencies and host employers “are jointly responsible for maintaining a safe work environment for temporary workers - including, for example, ensuring that OSHA's training, hazard communication, and recordkeeping requirements are fulfilled.” It adds: “Host employers must treat temporary workers like any other workers in terms of training and safety and health protections.”

In practice, raise the hazard with the facility's supervisor and your recruiter together, so neither can assume the other has it. If nothing changes, OSHA's complaint page says you have “the right to file a confidential safety and health complaint and request an OSHA inspection of your workplace if you believe there is a serious hazard,” and that employers “must also maintain a workplace free from retaliation for voicing concerns about hazards or violations of federal law” (OSHA: file a complaint).

If you want to know who to call on a bad day before you sign anything, ask a ProTherapy recruiter: Find my next contract.

What if you're harassed or treated unfairly at the facility?

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's guidance on staffing firms says their workers “typically qualify as ‘employees’ of the staffing firm, the client to whom they are assigned, or both,” and that “the client must treat the staffing firm worker assigned to it in a non-discriminatory manner” (EEOC: guidance on workers placed by staffing firms).

The agency has a duty as well. The guidance says a staffing firm “also is liable if it knew or should have known about the client's discrimination and failed to undertake prompt corrective measures within its control.” Those measures may include “insisting that prompt investigative and corrective measures be undertaken” and “affording the worker an opportunity, if (s)he so desires, to take a different job assignment at the same rate of pay.”

So tell your recruiter in writing, not only the facility. That puts the agency on notice, and the guidance treats what it does next as part of its own responsibility.

What should you ask a recruiter before you start?

Keep the answers in writing alongside your contract; they are questions you do not want to ask for the first time from an urgent care waiting room. For the rest of the first call, see questions to ask your recruiter, and for what the agency and the recruiter each control, recruiter vs agency.

Frequently asked questions

Is the agency or the facility responsible for my safety on a travel assignment?

Both. OSHA says the staffing agency and the host employer are joint employers of temporary workers, and that both are responsible for providing and maintaining a safe work environment for them.

Who handles a workers' compensation claim if I'm hurt on assignment?

Workers' compensation is run by the states. The Department of Labor says people injured on the job while employed by private companies should contact their state workers' compensation board. Ask your agency who its carrier is and which state's board the claim goes to.

Can I report a safety problem at the facility confidentially?

OSHA says you have the right to file a confidential safety and health complaint and request an inspection if you believe there is a serious hazard, and that employers must keep the workplace free from retaliation for voicing concerns about hazards.

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