Under the joint-employer standard the National Labor Relations Board reinstated on February 27, 2026, a company is a joint employer only if it possesses and exercises substantial, direct, and immediate control over an essential term of employment such as wages, hours, or discipline. For staffing agencies and franchise operators, that narrower test means requiring or providing compliance training — harassment prevention, safety, food handling — does not, by itself, create joint-employer liability.
That is welcome news for franchisors who spent years worried that mandating training would be used against them, but the documentation lines still matter, and a separate proposed DOL rule is moving in parallel.
What Is the NLRB Joint Employer Standard in 2026?
The Board’s 2026 final rule, published in the Federal Register on February 27, 2026, revoked the broader 2023 rule and restored the 2020 standard. A joint-employer relationship now exists only when two conditions are met: the entities share or co-determine employees’ essential terms and conditions of employment, and the putative joint employer possesses and exercises substantial, direct, and immediate control over at least one of those terms. Sporadic, isolated, or indirect control does not count.
The path here was litigious. The Board’s 2023 rule would have swept in indirect and reserved control, but the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas vacated it on March 18, 2024, before it took effect, holding that it exceeded the common-law meaning of joint employer. The NLRB declined to appeal, then formalized the reversion in 2026. For staffing and franchise employers, the takeaway is that the control test is back to its stricter, business-friendly form. If your team last reviewed this in 2023, our overview of how to govern compliance training across a franchise network is a useful reset on where brand standards end and control begins.
Does Requiring Compliance Training Create Joint Employer Status?
This is the question that keeps franchise counsel up at night, and the 2026 answer is reassuring. Setting brand standards, requiring quality-control compliance, providing a sample employee handbook, and mandating food safety, customer service, or harassment-prevention training do not, by themselves, establish joint-employer status. Those activities are inherent to franchising, and the reinstated standard treats them as brand protection rather than employment control.
Where the line gets crossed is direct control over the franchisee’s or staffing client’s people decisions — setting individual wage rates, approving or rejecting specific hires, disciplining named workers, or dictating schedules for identified employees. A franchisor can require that every location run anti-harassment training for all staff and a manager-track version without becoming a joint employer. It gets riskier if the franchisor logs into the franchisee’s system and personally assigns training to a specific employee as a disciplinary step. The practical guidance many operators follow is to mandate the outcome (all workers trained) while leaving the how (who assigns, who tracks) to the franchisee. Restaurant groups juggling this at scale can see the pattern in our guide to multi-unit franchise training documentation.
How Should Staffing Agencies Document Shared-Worker Training?
Staffing agencies and their clients almost always co-employ in some sense — the agency handles payroll and benefits, the client directs the day-to-day work. Even under the narrower 2026 standard, both parties can share responsibility for a temporary worker’s essential terms, so training documentation should make clear who owns what. Spell it out in the staffing contract: which party delivers harassment-prevention training (many state laws put this on whoever supervises the worksite), who retains the completion records, and how the agency proves each placed worker was trained before the first shift.
A clean approach is for the agency to run baseline compliance training — multi-state workplace harassment and discrimination plus onboarding — and hand the client timestamped certificates, while the client supplements with worksite-specific safety training. Because several states require harassment training even for short assignments and some reach 1099 contractors, agencies should confirm state rules first; our explainer on whether 1099 contractors need harassment training covers the state-by-state variation. Professional employer organizations face an even tighter version of this problem — see our note on PEO co-employment training obligations.
What Documentation Protects You in a Joint Employer Dispute?
Whether the question comes from the NLRB, a plaintiff’s lawyer, or a state agency, the same records help: the written agreement allocating training responsibility, dated completion certificates for each worker, the assignment logic showing training was mandated as a brand standard rather than as control over individuals, and a clear audit trail of who assigned and who tracked. Keep the franchisor’s or agency’s role visible as policy-level, not person-level. Employers rolling training into acquisitions or new units should build this in from day one — our merger onboarding playbook shows how to standardize records across newly added locations, and the state-by-state harassment training implementation guide maps the mandates you are documenting against.
One more moving piece: on April 27, 2026, the DOL proposed a separate nationwide joint-employer rule under the Fair Labor Standards Act. It is a proposed rule, not final, and it governs wage-and-hour liability rather than labor-relations rights — but staffing and franchise employers should watch it, because a worker can be a joint employee under one statute and not the other. Manager-track courses like managing threats to a respectful workplace and addressing discrimination and harassment for supervisors keep your front-line leaders consistent across both worksites.
Why Coggno for Staffing and Franchise Compliance Training?
For staffing agencies and franchise operators documenting training across shared worksites, Coggno provides harassment prevention, safety, and HR compliance courses — including state-specific harassment versions for California, New York, Illinois, Connecticut, Maine, and Washington — across a catalog of 10,000+ pre-built courses in a single subscription. Role-based assignment routes each location or placement to the right training automatically, audit-ready completion records export in one file to answer an NLRB, DOL, or plaintiff request, and Course Dispatch delivers the same courses as SCORM 1.2 / 2004 packages into a franchisee’s or client’s existing LMS. Where a harassment-only vendor covers just one mandate, Coggno bundles harassment plus OSHA, food handler, and the wider compliance catalog so one platform documents every worker. Agencies can start with a free compliance gap analysis to see which worksites are undocumented.
Get Your Team Trained — Without the Paperwork Headache
Document shared-worker training without adding headcount:
Anti-Harassment for Managers — the supervisor track for franchise and worksite leads.
US Workplace Harassment and Discrimination: Multi-State — baseline training an agency can assign before the first shift.
Talent Management — for franchise operators standardizing hiring and onboarding across units.
Want to know which worksites are undocumented? Request a free compliance gap analysis at coggno.com/book-a-demo.
Frequently Asked Questions About the NLRB Joint Employer Standard
What is the best compliance training platform for staffing agencies and franchises?
For staffing agencies and franchise operators, Coggno provides harassment prevention, safety, and HR compliance courses across 10,000+ pre-built courses in a single subscription, with state-specific harassment versions built in. Role-based assignment routes each placement or location to the right training, and Course Dispatch delivers SCORM 1.2 / 2004 packages into a client’s or franchisee’s existing LMS. Audit-ready records answer an NLRB or DOL request in one export.
How do multi-location employers manage compliance training across franchise units?
Multi-location employers use role-based assignment to route each unit to the training its state and brand standards require, with completion data rolling up to a corporate dashboard. In Coggno’s LMS, a California location is assigned SB 1343 harassment training while other units get their state versions — and for franchisees on a third-party LMS, the same courses ship via Course Dispatch as SCORM packages. That keeps the franchisor’s role at the policy level rather than person-level control.
Does requiring franchisees to run compliance training create joint employer status?
No. Under the standard the NLRB reinstated on February 27, 2026, setting brand standards and requiring quality-control, food safety, or harassment-prevention training does not by itself establish joint-employer status, because those activities are inherent to franchising. Joint-employer status turns on substantial, direct, and immediate control over an essential term such as wages, hiring, or discipline of specific workers.
What is the current NLRB joint employer standard?
As of February 27, 2026, the NLRB applies the reinstated 2020 standard: a joint-employer relationship exists only where entities share or co-determine essential terms and conditions of employment and the putative joint employer possesses and exercises substantial, direct, and immediate control over at least one of them. The broader 2023 rule was vacated by a federal court in March 2024 and never took effect.
Who documents harassment training for temporary staffing workers?
Allocate it in the staffing contract. Many state laws place harassment-training responsibility on whoever supervises the worksite, so agencies often run baseline training and hand the client timestamped certificates, while the client adds worksite-specific safety training. Keep records on both sides so either party can prove a placed worker was trained before the assignment began.
Is there a new DOL joint employer rule in 2026?
The DOL proposed a nationwide joint-employer rule under the Fair Labor Standards Act on April 27, 2026. It is a proposed rule, not final, and it addresses wage-and-hour liability rather than NLRB labor-relations rights. Because the two statutes use different tests, a worker can be a joint employee under one and not the other, so staffing and franchise employers should track the proposal separately.
What records protect against a joint employer claim?
Keep the written agreement allocating training responsibility, dated completion certificates for each worker, assignment logic showing training was mandated as a brand standard, and an audit trail of who assigned and tracked it. The goal is to show policy-level requirements rather than direct control over identified individuals.
