PF, ESIC, wage definitions, contractor hygiene, and apprenticeship status are not ‘HR admin’. They are the difference between a workforce and a liability. RPO and payroll exist because this work is boring and fatal when skipped.

We will not promise that an apprentice ‘has no labour law’. We will say: a genuine trainee seat, run as the Act intends, is a different legal object from a workman. The file has to match the floor.