Every summer, and at the peak of every major project in Atyrau, the same picture repeats itself. A contractor needs to put dozens of people on site within a couple of weeks, and six months later needs to shrink the headcount just as fast — without breaking the permanent team and without paying redundancy compensation. This is the moment companies start looking seriously at outstaffing, one of the most misunderstood HR services in Kazakhstan, where workers are formally employed by a staffing company but actually work for the client. The people typing that query into Google are increasingly not junior HR staff but finance directors who calculate the full cost of a workstation, not just the salary in the job ad.
Let us look at how this actually works, without the marketing slogans. FSSA, as a staffing agency in an oil and gas region, sees both sides of the deal — the company that needs to cover a project peak, and the people who are moved off the payroll — and therefore treats agency labour soberly: it is a working tool, but with caveats that rarely make it into the sales pitch. The word itself literally means moving staff "off the roster." The worker signs an employment contract with the sending party, that is, the agency, but works under the management and control of the receiving party — your business. It sounds simple, but behind this structure sits an entire article of the Labour Code and a set of obligations that clients often discover only after the fact.
Outstaffing versus outsourcing: what you are actually buying
These two words get confused in almost every conversation, yet the difference is fundamental and it directly determines who is responsible for what. With outsourcing, you hand a contractor an entire function or process — cleaning, accounting, warehouse logistics, catering at a rotational camp — and the contractor is responsible for the result. They select the people, organise the work, control quality, and you pay for the outcome, not for man-hours.
Outstaffing works differently. You do not transfer a function; you transfer specific employees. You manage them, you assign the tasks, you control discipline and results — while the staffing company handles the paperwork, payroll, taxes, reporting and HR administration. Put simply, outsourcing says "do it for us," while outstaffing says "give us the people and take the paperwork and tax burden off our hands." On industrial projects the two models often run side by side: service functions go to outsourcing, while line and engineering staff for a specific contract are engaged through outstaffing.
For a long time agency labour existed in a grey zone in Kazakhstan: it was neither banned nor regulated. That changed at the end of 2020. A law dated 19 December 2020 introduced full regulation of staff provision into the Labour Code — essentially legalising and describing what the market had been doing for years. The key provision is Article 137-1 of the Labour Code. It defines three roles: the sending party (the staffing company that provides people), the receiving party (the client that engages them) and the workers of the sending party. The relationship between agency and client is formalised through a staff provision agreement. The law also fixed closed lists of grounds for when workers may and may not be sent to a receiving party (clauses 3 and 5 of Article 137-1), which means outstaffing is not a universal substitute for hiring — it is meant for specific, defined situations.
When outstaffing actually pays off
The most honest way to put it: outstaffing pays off where the need for people is temporary or hard to predict. The classic scenario for Atyrau is a turnaround or a project start-up phase, when crews need to be scaled up several times over for two or three months and then returned to the base headcount. Keeping those people on the permanent payroll between peaks makes no sense — they sit idle but keep earning a salary and accruing leave.
The second scenario is entering a new region or launching a line of business before the company is ready to open a full division and inflate its headcount table. The third is a large contract that requires a fast ramp-up without changing the permanent structure or going through a heavy future redundancy procedure. The fourth, discussed less often, is a kind of extended probation: the client observes people in real work and then, if it wishes, moves the best of them onto its own payroll. For a rotational and project labour market, where a bad hire is expensive, that is a tangible advantage.
It is worth being honest about where the saving actually comes from, because there is a lot of illusion here. It is not that a person "costs less." The agency rate includes salary, taxes, social contributions and its own margin, so on the bare rate an outstaffed worker is rarely cheaper than a permanent one. The value lies elsewhere. You carry no cost for recruitment, HR administration or maintaining a payroll function for this group, and above all you do not pay for idle time between peaks or for redundancy compensation. For a project business whose workload swings with the schedule, that often outweighs everything else.
The risks buyers of HR services in Kazakhstan overlook
Now for what service sellers mention reluctantly. The 2020 regulation protected workers and at the same time shifted part of a real employer's duties onto the receiving party — which is exactly why anyone shopping for HR services in Kazakhstan should read the contract closely. The first and most expensive point is equal pay. Under clause 1-1 of Article 103 of the Labour Code, the base salary of a sending party's worker cannot be lower than that of your permanent employees in a comparable position and under the same conditions. The idea of "the same people, but cheaper" breaks against this rule: pay discrimination against agency workers is directly prohibited by clause 8 of Article 137-1. With the minimum wage at 85,000 tenge in 2026, the comparison is of course not against that floor but against the real salaries of your own people in the same roles.
Next comes occupational safety, and on hazardous production this is no formality. If you have harmful working conditions, you must give the agency the results of your workplace attestation. The sending party, in turn, insures its workers against accidents taking into account the occupational risk class of your specific enterprise. If something happens on site, you will investigate the accident jointly with the agency — the law expressly requires the receiving party to take part. You, not the agency, keep the record of these workers' working time, and under the rotational method with its aggregated time accounting that is a separate area to watch.
There is also a tax and legal risk worth stating plainly. Outstaffing cannot be used as a screen to disguise ordinary employment and escape an employer's obligations. If a person in fact works for you for years like a staff member, and the "off-roster" status exists only on paper and only to save on taxes and guarantees, that becomes a claim at the first serious inspection. This is why choosing an agency is not about the lowest rate but about who drafts the contract correctly, insures people under your risk class, and does not expose you to breaches of equal pay and safety rules. Cheap outstaffing built on violations costs more than any downtime — the bill simply arrives later, and not where you expected it.
FAQ
Is outstaffing legal in Kazakhstan?
Yes. Since 19 December 2020 staff provision has been directly regulated by the Labour Code, primarily by Article 137-1. It is a legal model provided a staff provision agreement is in place and the requirements on pay, safety and insurance are met.
Who pays the salary and is responsible for the worker?
The salary is calculated and paid by the sending party — the agency with which the worker has an employment contract. But the receiving party manages the worker, keeps the record of working time and takes part in investigating accidents. In practice responsibility is shared between both parties.
Can an agency worker be paid less than a permanent one?
No. Clause 1-1 of Article 103 of the Labour Code requires the base salary to be no lower than that of a permanent employee in a comparable position. Saving money by underpaying is unlawful.
What should you check in a staff provision agreement?
Confirm that safety and working-time duties are correctly allocated, that the pay level is fixed no lower than permanent staff in comparable roles, that workers are insured under your occupational risk class, and that a procedure for joint accident investigation is written in.