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Since employers’ associations (EAs) were established in France in 1985, their main function has been the provision of time-shared employees to their member companies (employee placement). However, it transpired in the context of a longitudinal action-research, which started in 2015 with a network of EAs, that employee placement was managed differently from one association to another in terms of billing rules and the legal framework used. The objective of this article is to examine the challenges faced by these associations in providing SMEs and member associations with employees. More precisely, it is a question of putting into perspective the complexity of the management of these employees on employee placement, as much on a legal as on a managerial level. The chosen approach for this research was multidisciplinary so as to reflect as truthfully as possible the reality of the field. To our knowledge, research already conducted in this area focuses on the status of the employee on employee placement but hardly questions, if at all, the relationship with user companies (or members, in the case of EAs) and the EAs themselves. Based on twenty semi-structured interviews conducted with the directorates, presidencies, and employees on employee placement from eleven EAs, this research presents a double contribution. First, it stresses the importance of the employee placement convention, which, beyond securing the relationship between the EA and the SME member, has the merit of placing the employee at the heart of the process. Second, it reinforces the relevance of a contingent approach to assessing HRM for SMEs.