How to check a Lithuanian staffing agency is actually legitimate

If a staffing agency in Lithuania tells you it is licensed, registered and compliant, you can verify that in about a minute. Very few employers do, and the ones who get caught out by an agency that collapses mid-contract are almost always the ones who never looked.

Here is what to check, in the order it matters.

There is a public list, and being on it is not optional

A company that supplies temporary agency workers in Lithuania — the model usually described as labour sub-renting, where the agency employs the worker and the worker performs duties for you — must appear on the list of temporary employment agencies maintained and published by the State Labour Inspectorate (VDI).

Inclusion is not automatic and it is not a one-off. A company applies in writing to be added. More importantly, it has to keep earning its place.

The monthly report is the part that tells you something

Every agency on the list must report to VDI by the 15th of each month on the previous month's activity: the countries in which its temporary workers were employed, how many workers in each, and the total hours worked. The report goes through VDI's own electronic system.

Miss it, and the sequence is mechanical. VDI gives three business days to respond. If nothing arrives, the agency is removed from the list within five business days — and cannot reapply for at least six months.

That rule is what makes the list worth checking. It is not a certificate issued once and framed on a wall. It is a live record of whether a company has filed its returns every month, and an agency that has been dropped is an agency that either stopped operating or stopped complying. Either is something you want to know before you sign.

What it means if your agency is not on it

One of three things, and none of them is good for you.

It may not do temporary agency work at all — some firms only place workers into direct employment with the client, which is a different model with different obligations, and in that case the list does not apply. Ask them to say so plainly, in writing.

It may have been removed for not reporting.

Or it may never have applied, which in a regulated activity tells you how it treats its other obligations.

The checks worth doing alongside it

The register is the fastest signal, not the only one.

Who actually employs the worker. In the temporary agency model the agency is the employer and carries the employer's duties; you are the user undertaking and carry some of them on your own site. If a prospective supplier cannot explain that split in a sentence, they have not thought about it. Our article on what a temporary staffing contract actually covers sets out where the line falls.

Equal treatment. A temporary agency worker is entitled to conditions no worse than if you had hired them directly for the same job. An agency quoting you a rate that only works if the worker is paid less than your own people is quoting you a problem.

Company basics. Registration, VAT status, and whether there are outstanding social-insurance debts. All matters of public record in Lithuania, and an agency with arrears to the state is an agency whose workers may not be paid next month.

Ask for a client who left. Any agency can supply a happy reference. Ask instead for a client who stopped using them and why. The answer, and the willingness to answer, tells you more than the reference will.

Why we are writing this

It is a fair question, since we are an agency and this article tells you how to audit one.

The answer is that the firms doing this properly are not harmed by employers who check, and we would rather compete against suppliers who are on the list and filing their returns. Everything we do on the recruitment side depends on a client believing the paperwork behind it. The problems we are asked to clean up — a crew abandoned mid-contract, workers unpaid, permits lapsed because nobody filed anything — come from the other kind, and they damage the reputation of every agency in the market.

So: check the list before you sign anything. Check ours. And if you are weighing suppliers and want the rest of the questions worth asking, put the requirement in front of us and we will answer them about ourselves first.