Who Actually Counts as “Employee” Under PoSH? Interns, Gig Workers, Vendors, and the Coverage Gaps HR Misses

A company hired a content intern for six months. Unpaid. No formal appointment letter. She came in three days a week, attended team meetings, and worked under a senior manager. Midway through her internship, she experienced repeated unwelcome remarks from a colleague in an adjacent team. She wanted to raise a complaint.

The HR team hesitated. Was she even covered under the PoSH Act? Did the Internal Committee have jurisdiction? Could they investigate a complaint involving someone who was not on payroll?

The answer, grounded in the plain text of the law, is yes. But the fact that the HR team needed to pause and check tells you something important: the coverage of the PoSH Act is far wider than most organisations realise, and the gaps in implementation are just as wide.

Two Definitions That HR Teams Often Confuse

The PoSH Act contains two definitions that work in tandem but are not the same thing. Conflating them is one of the most common compliance errors organisations make.

Section 2(a): “Aggrieved Woman”

This defines who can file a complaint. The Act says an aggrieved woman is “a woman, of any age whether employed or not, who alleges to have been subjected to any act of sexual harassment by the respondent.”

The phrase “whether employed or not” is doing a great deal of work here. It means that a woman does not need to be on your payroll, hold a formal contract, or receive a salary to file a complaint at your workplace. She needs only to have experienced harassment in connection with your workplace.

Section 2(f): “Employee”

This defines who can be a respondent, that is, who can be held accountable under the Act. The definition reads: an employee is “a person employed at a workplace for any work on 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, or working on a voluntary basis or otherwise, whether the terms of employment are express or implied and includes a co-worker, a contract worker, probationer, trainee, apprentice or called by any other such name.”

Notice that remuneration is not a requirement. A volunteer can be a respondent. A trainee can be a respondent. A contractor placed through an agency can be a respondent, even if the principal employer did not directly hire them.

Together, these two definitions create an unusually wide net. The question most HR teams are not equipped to answer is: how wide, exactly?

Interns: The Most Commonly Misclassified Category

India does not have a standalone law governing internships. This regulatory silence leads many organisations to treat interns as operating outside all formal frameworks, including PoSH.

That reading is wrong.

Under Section 2(f), a “trainee” or “apprentice” is explicitly included in the definition of employee. This covers:

Paid interns with offer letters. Unpaid interns with no formal documentation. Students placed through colleges as part of curriculum requirements. Pre-placement offer trainees. Interns hired through third-party staffing platforms.

The intern in our opening scenario was a “trainee” under the Act the moment she began working at the organisation’s premises under supervision. Her lack of salary did not remove her from the Act’s coverage.

What this means for HR: Interns must be included in PoSH orientation at onboarding. They must be told who their IC contact is. They must be informed of the complaint process. And complaints filed by or against interns must be treated with the same procedural rigour as those involving permanent employees.

Contract and Third-Party Workers: Coverage Determined by Function, Not Contract Type

Many organisations rely heavily on workers placed through staffing agencies, manpower contractors, or outsourced service providers. The instinctive response is to assume that “their employer handles their HR matters.” Under PoSH, that assumption can expose the principal employer to serious liability.

Section 2(f) explicitly includes persons “employed through an agent, including a contractor, with or without the knowledge of the principal employer.” This means:

A housekeeping worker placed through a facility management company who works daily at your office is covered. A security guard deployed by an outsourced agency is covered. A data entry operator hired through a staffing firm is covered. A consultant retained for a project is, depending on the nature of their engagement, likely covered.

What this means for HR: The primary obligation to ensure a safe workplace rests with whoever manages and controls that workplace, which is the principal employer. Your PoSH policy, IC contact details, and complaint mechanisms must be accessible to contract workers. Where harassment involves a contract worker as complainant or respondent, your IC must have a process to engage. This may require coordination with the staffing agency, but the responsibility to initiate that coordination sits with the principal employer.

Vendors and Visiting Professionals: The Third-Party Trap

A vendor’s sales executive visits your office regularly to service an account. During one of those visits, she is harassed by your employee in the meeting room. She wants to report it.

Under Section 2(a), she is an aggrieved woman in relation to your workplace. She does not need to be employed by your organisation. The harassment occurred in a space you control, connected to a professional interaction your organisation facilitated. Your IC has jurisdiction.

The same applies to delivery personnel, auditors from partner firms, consultants visiting for a specific engagement, and client representatives attending meetings at your premises.

The practical challenge here is that vendors and visiting professionals often do not know your IC exists. They may not know they have a right to complain. And the default assumption, held by both parties, is that this is “not my company’s problem.”

What this means for HR: PoSH notices and IC contact details displayed at reception and meeting areas are not just a compliance formality. They are a mechanism for ensuring that every woman who interacts with your workplace knows her rights. If a complaint is filed by or against a vendor or contractor from another organisation,

Gig Workers: The Largest and Least Protected Category

This is where the law’s reach runs into its clearest structural limit.

India’s gig economy now employs an estimated 12 million workers, a figure projected to reach 23.5 million by 2029-30 according to government estimates. These workers, including delivery executives, ride-hailing drivers, on-demand service providers, and platform-based freelancers, occupy a legal grey zone that PoSH has not yet fully resolved.

The core problem is definitional. A gig worker typically does not have a fixed employer, does not work at a fixed workplace, and does not have an employment contract in the conventional sense. The PoSH Act’s definitions of “employer,” “employee,” and “workplace” presuppose some form of structured, identifiable relationship. Platform-mediated work disrupts all three.

In practice, this means a delivery executive who faces harassment by a customer has no IC to approach. A freelancer working across multiple client sites may not know which organisation’s IC, if any, has jurisdiction over her complaint. A platform-based gig worker who is harassed by another worker engaged by the same platform may find that no single “employer” accepts responsibility.

The Ministry of Labour’s September 2024 notification on registering platform workers on the e-Shram portal, and the subsequent implementation of the Labour Codes in November 2025, are steps toward formal recognition of gig workers within the broader labour framework. Karnataka’s Platform-Based Gig Workers (Social Security and Welfare) Act, 2025 introduced Internal Dispute Resolution Committees as part of aggregator obligations. But none of these instruments yet create a clear, enforceable PoSH mechanism for platform workers.

Courts have begun moving in the direction of extended coverage. Legal commentary and academic writing, including a 2024 piece in Economic and Political Weekly, has argued for progressive judicial interpretation of the PoSH Act to include gig workers even before legislative reform. But for now, gig workers remain the category most likely to fall through the coverage gap.

What this means for HR: If your organisation engages gig or platform workers for any part of its operations, whether through an aggregator or a direct arrangement, build a voluntary policy framework that mirrors PoSH obligations. Designate a grievance point of contact. Include gig-engaged workers in your workplace safety communications. This is not legally mandated yet. It is, however, the standard that progressive organisations are beginning to hold themselves to.

The “Fewer Than 10 Employees” Question

The PoSH Act mandates an Internal Committee for organisations with 10 or more employees. Organisations below that threshold must direct complaints to the Local Complaints Committee constituted at the district level.

Two things HR teams frequently get wrong here:

First, the 10-employee threshold includes all workers covered by the Section 2(f) definition, not just permanent employees on payroll. Contract workers, trainees, ad hoc workers, and volunteers count toward that number. An organisation that believes it has 8 employees but has 4 interns and 3 contractual staff may actually cross the threshold.

Second, organisations below the threshold are not exempt from PoSH obligations. They cannot investigate complaints themselves, but they must have a mechanism for directing complainants to the relevant Local Complaints Committee, and they must still conduct awareness sessions and display notices.

Where Most HR Policies Fail

The coverage gaps above are legal. The gaps below are operational, and they are the ones that create real liability.

Most PoSH policies are written for permanent employees. The language, the processes, the communication, and the training are designed for people on payroll. This leaves everyone else in limbo. Interns learn about the IC only if a well-meaning HR team member remembers to mention it. Contract workers are rarely included in annual PoSH training. Vendor partners attending your office events have no idea who your IC members are. Gig workers have no structured channel at all.

A well-designed compliance programme closes these gaps at the point of entry. Every person who interacts with your workplace, in any capacity, should be able to answer two questions: what behaviour is prohibited here, and who do I contact if I experience a problem?

What Your IC Should Have in Place

• An inclusive scope clause in your PoSH policy. The policy document should explicitly name interns, trainees, contract workers, temporary staff, and visiting professionals as covered individuals, both as potential complainants and potential respondents.
• Onboarding-stage disclosure. PoSH orientation should happen at the start of any engagement, not just for permanent employees. A one-page briefing note for interns and contractual staff, given on day one, is a defensible minimum.
• Accessible complaint channels. Multiple reporting pathways matter. Email, a named IC contact, and a physical notice at the workplace are the baseline. For workers who may not visit the office regularly, a public-facing IC contact on your website is worth considering.
• A third-party escalation protocol. When a complaint involves a vendor, contractor, or staffing agency employee, your IC should have a documented process for how that complaint will be handled, including how the other organisation will be engaged.
• Training that includes the full workforce picture. Annual PoSH training should not be designed only for permanent employees. IC members, in particular, need to understand the full range of people who can file a complaint with them, and the procedural steps for each scenario.

The Bigger Picture

The PoSH Act was written with a deliberately expansive lens. Its drafters understood that harassment does not respect employment categories. The legislation’s definitions of “aggrieved woman,” “employee,” and “workplace” reflect a policy intent to protect every woman who enters a work-related space, regardless of her contract type or payroll status.

The gap between that legislative intent and most organisations’ actual compliance practice is significant. Filling it requires moving beyond the minimal compliance mindset, beyond the framing of PoSH as a checkbox for permanent employees only, and toward a workplace safety culture that is genuinely inclusive of every person who walks through your door or joins your video call.

The organisations that do this well are not doing something legally exceptional. They are doing what the law always intended.

How Kelp Can Help

Kelp works with organisations across India to build PoSH frameworks that go beyond minimum compliance. Our advisory and training engagements cover:

Policy review and drafting that includes the full workforce, permanent staff, contractual workers, interns, and third-party professionals. IC member training that equips your committee to handle non-standard complaints, including those involving vendors, contractors, and trainees. Annual PoSH training programmes that are inclusive by design, not as an afterthought. Compliance audits that assess whether your processes are reaching every category of worker covered under the Act.

If your organisation is unsure how its current PoSH framework treats interns, gig workers, or visiting professionals, that uncertainty is worth resolving now, before a complaint makes the question urgent.

Reach out to us at info@kelphr.com, call 95001 29652, or visit www.kelphr.com to speak with a Kelp PoSH expert.