You remain an entrepreneur with your own name and clients, and become bigger than you could on your own.
The staffing market is being reshaped within two years. If you run on volume, you will see your margin evaporate. If you run on expertise, you need scale to carry the new requirements — compliance, training, technology. Exactly the things you can no longer build profitably on your own.
Labour-cost arbitrage disappears, and compliance becomes a ticket to entry rather than a differentiator. What remains is the real craft: finding, keeping, developing and smartly deploying people.
Registration with the Dutch Labour Supply Authority (NAU) is open from 1 November to 31 December; miss it and you fall outside the transitional arrangement. In addition, from 31 December a legal presumption of employment applies to self-employed workers paid below the statutory minimum rate.
The hirer's full package of employment terms will apply. The margin on capacity becomes structurally thinner.
No more supplying workers without admission — with a standards framework, a certificate of conduct (VOG) and a security deposit per legal entity. From 2028 enforcement follows, clients may no longer hire from a party without admission, and the flexible-work rules get stricter.
Between now and 2028 the playing field is being redrawn. The changes are separate from one another, but they all push the same way: the margin on volume gets thinner and the fixed costs of taking part get higher. Counting on delay is no longer a strategy.
From 1 November to 31 December 2026 you register with the Dutch Labour Supply Authority (NAU). Miss it and you fall outside the transitional arrangement. It is the first hard deadline, and it is closer than most entrepreneurs think.
The hirer's pay rule is being widened to the client's full package of employment terms. Not just the hourly wage, but everything an in-house employee receives. For anyone competing on price, that is a direct hit to the business model, because that is precisely where the room was. For anyone competing on expertise, little changes at the core — the rate there was never set by differences in employment terms anyway.
From 2027 you may no longer supply workers without admission. The start date is fixed. Enforcement follows in 2028: from then on, clients may no longer hire from a party without admission. Admission requires demonstrable good order: a standards framework, a certificate of conduct (VOG), error-free payroll administration and a security deposit. That is not a formality you sort out in an afternoon.
One nuance that is often missed: this regime covers the supply of workers — temporary staffing, secondment, payroll. Genuine assignments with self-employed professionals fall under a different regime, with its own enforcement story. If you do both, you are dealing with two tracks.
From 2028 the contract itself also becomes less flexible: hour bands instead of zero hours, a shorter agency phase and a longer break before a new chain of contracts may begin. Flexibility through the contract disappears. From now on, flexibility has to come from the deployability of your own people.
The sum is uncomfortable. The cost advantage of 'cheaper than permanent staff' disappears, and compliance becomes a ticket to entry rather than a differentiator. Revenue per hour is under pressure, while the cost of being allowed to supply at all is rising. Those costs are also largely fixed: compliance, systems, legal support. A firm of fifty people carries almost the same burden as a firm of five hundred, but spreads it over a tenth of the revenue.
That is exactly where the glass ceiling sits that many entrepreneurs in this market recognise. And it is a question of scale, not of entrepreneurship.
Fine businesses have been built on one target group in one sector. They prove the model works. They also show where it stops.
Focus on one talent pool within one sector, and you grow to the size of that combination and no further. The proposition is sharp, the market is finite. Broadening requires knowledge of a second sector, a second client network and a second way of training — and in practice that means starting a new business alongside the existing one.
The way out is not to grow bigger in the same niche, but to decouple the two axes. There are brands that know a sector from the inside: they know how government, healthcare, IT, business services or the energy transition work, what clients buy and which roles are emerging. And there are brands that know a talent pool from the inside: they know how to find, train and support those people. Each lacks what the other has. The first type cannot find enough people, the second cannot find enough assignments. The learning layer connects them.
Bring them together and the same inflow expertise suddenly serves five sectors, while each sector gains access to supply it would never have found on its own. That is not the sum of two businesses but a multiplication.
The market forces a choice: specialist in scarce professions, scale player on technology and compliance, or workforce partner orchestrating a client's entire flexible workforce. The undifferentiated middle gets ground down between stricter rules and the economies of scale of bigger players. A platform lets a brand stay a specialist — and still have the scale.
That broadening only works if there is something underneath to carry it. Admission and compliance, contracting, payroll, subsidy applications, data and AI: you build that once properly or five times by halves. That is why consolidation in this market is not a financial trick but an operational necessity.
And there is a consequence entrepreneurs often only mention later: together you get a seat at the table with clients you could not take on alone. Large framework contracts demand breadth, demonstrable compliance and reliable delivery across several sectors. That is precisely what you cannot pull off on your own.