No. There is no agreement with employers but all team personnel are highly encouraged to have employer support (the level of that support varies from employer to employer). The support should, at least, include their willingness to allow team personnel to infrequently deploy for up to two weeks. Frequency of deployments is completely dependent on disasters. For VA-1 DMAT, the team has historically deployed once or twice a year for two week periods. There have been no deployments in some years. There was one full team deployment in 2016 and one in 2017 however available team personnel may also be assigned to other DMATs as backfills. For example in response to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma in 2017, a full VA-1 DMAT team deployed and additional team personnel also deployed with three other DMATs that needed extra personnel.

Employer support should also be sought for team meetings and training. See this FAQ.