Who Is Covered Under POSH: Interns, Contract Staff, and Gig Workers

HR teams managing a mixed workforce — full-time employees, interns, contractors, consultants, and increasingly gig or platform workers — often ask a version of the same question: does POSH protection extend to everyone we engage, or only to people on our own payroll? The Act's answer is unusually generous in scope, and getting this wrong is one of the more common compliance gaps we see.

The Act's definition of "employee" is intentionally broad

Section 2(f) of the POSH Act defines "employee" to include a person employed for any work on a regular, temporary, ad hoc, or daily wage basis, either directly or through an agent, including a contractor, with or without the knowledge of the principal employer, whether for remuneration or not, and whether the terms are express or implied. It further explicitly includes a co-worker, a contract worker, a probationer, a trainee, and an apprentice.

This wording was drafted precisely to prevent employers from using employment structure as a way of excluding categories of workers from protection. In practice, it means:

• Interns — paid or unpaid — are covered, full stop. The "with or without remuneration" language exists specifically to close any argument that unpaid interns fall outside the Act.
• Contract and outsourced staff — including those supplied through a staffing agency or contractor — are covered, even though their direct employer is technically the agency, not your company.
• Consultants and retainer-based professionals working at or in connection with your workplace generally fall within the protective scope, particularly where they're integrated into day-to-day operations.
• Gig and platform workers present a genuinely evolving area — while the Act predates the gig economy's current scale, the broad "employed for any work... whether for remuneration or not" language, combined with the workplace-follows-the-work definition, supports extending protection to gig workers performing work connected to the principal employer, and several state guidelines and sectoral advisories have moved in this direction.

Whose IC handles the complaint when the respondent or complainant is a contractor?

This is where it gets operationally tricky. If a contract worker supplied by a staffing agency is harassed at your premises, the Internal Committee of the principal employer (i.e., your company, where the work is actually performed) generally has jurisdiction to inquire — the Act places responsibility on whoever exercises control over the workplace where the incident occurred, not solely on the worker's formal payroll employer. This is a deliberate design choice: a contract worker shouldn't be left without recourse simply because their staffing agency, often located elsewhere, has no functioning IC of its own.

We strongly recommend that companies engaging significant contract or agency staff clarify, contractually and in policy, which IC has jurisdiction — ideally the client/principal employer's IC, since that's where the work environment and evidence actually sit.

Interns specifically: a frequent gap in company policy

Because internships are often short, informal, and managed loosely compared to full-time hiring, many companies simply forget to extend onboarding communications about POSH policy to interns. This is a mistake on two fronts: interns are explicitly protected under the Act, and they are often more vulnerable — junior, temporary, and less familiar with internal escalation channels than permanent staff. Include interns in your POSH induction, no matter how short their tenure.

What about the respondent side — can an intern or contractor be the one accused?

Yes. The definition of "employee" for protective purposes and the identity of a potential respondent are separate questions — anyone at the workplace, including an intern, contractor, or even a third party, can be named as a respondent if the allegations connect to conduct at or arising from the workplace. We address third-party and non-employee respondents specifically in our post on vendors, clients, and outsiders as respondents.

Practical steps for a mixed workforce

• Explicitly name interns, contract staff, consultants, and (where applicable) gig workers as covered persons in your written POSH policy — don't rely on the statutory definition doing the work silently.
• Include POSH orientation in intern and contractor onboarding, not just full-time employee induction.
• Clarify jurisdiction contractually with staffing agencies and vendors — specify that the principal employer's IC will handle complaints arising at its premises.
• Extend visibility of your IC's contact details and complaint process to every category of worker present at your workplace, including those who aren't on your direct payroll.

For companies building or refreshing training to cover this broader population, our post on POSH training frequency and best practices covers how to structure sessions for a mixed employee, intern, and contractor audience.

Key takeaway

The POSH Act was built to follow the work, not the payroll structure. Interns, contractors, consultants, and — increasingly — gig workers fall within its protective scope, and the principal employer where the work is actually performed typically bears responsibility for providing a functioning redressal mechanism. Excluding these categories from your policy isn't just a compliance gap — it leaves some of your most vulnerable workers with the least clarity about their rights.