1. Employee Termination
Employee termination generally happens when an employee’s working contract with an employer or a company ends, which implicate in many reasons and different kind of forms.
Normally, beside some exceptions, employer either needs the cause and the notice to end an employment contract. A fair dismissal related to the poor performance by the employee, termination for behavior or reductions in force, in which they had been warned about that before.
In Brazil, for example, the cause to terminate an employee is limited by the law to only one kind of case is grossing misconduct and therefore economic reasons or showing a poor performance is excluding
At-will employment is also an exceptional situation used in US labor law, which could be described as: an employer can dismiss an employee for any reasons, without establishing “just cause” or any warning and in reverse. To protect the employee’ right, this law requires employer must demonstrate an effort to correct their staff’s performance or whichever issues led to that decision. This special concept hasn’t recorded in anywhere outside the boundary of the United States.
So, if you have an intention of hiring diversity of labor force in different countries, here are the checklist of considerations:
- Do these countries need just cause to employee termination?
- If so, what kind of reasons could be seen as reasonable and what processes go?
- Are there qualifying criteria for termination, such as duration of service, local headcount, salary thresholds, etc.?
- Is there a local system of termination penalty payments in lieu of just cause (as in Spain)?
- What are the local termination notice requirements?
2. Paid Time Off, Annual leave, Sick leave, etc.
A paid time off policy is not be decided in the scope of your company only. In a specific country, the definition of paid time off is different. In literally, it combines vacation, sick time or a pool of days that they use to take paid time off from work. However, interestingly, in the U.S., there’s no distinguish between these vacation or sick days as well as not allow transfer the unused day to the following year. An employee who work under a year usually has 16 days paid time off compared to 12 days in Vietnam. Or if you want to hire a Hungarian, you should know that in there an employee with three children may have an extra 7 days off over a peer with no child.
Vacation bonus is set often 25 to 33% on top of normal wage in Belgium and the Netherlands and requires employers to pay their employees.
There is one common rule, in almost any countries, this law usually leaning toward protecting workers, which is lead to these notices:
- How many days off is minimum in that country? Is this accrue or not?
- The differences of bonus in service, age, gender, family situation?
- Does it need to be evidenced by a doctor’s confirm?
- What are the other types of leave are employees entitled to? Are these paid or unpaid, and at what rate?
3. Working Time Regulations.
Most workers are classified as either exempt or non-exempt employee depending on their position at work and their salary. Exempt employees are expected to work overtime or at whatever hours that required accomplishing their duties. Thus, it is needed to have more flexibility work schedule than non-exempt or hourly employees.
In Europe, generally, you should only consider the senior executives as exempt. However, as in France, an employer can eliminate the necessary to track work hours on a daily and weekly based on a certain employee grades.
To conclusion, you need to acknowledge the fact that you may administer and pay for overtime for some types of employees and who are not.
The questions to consider before tracking and paying are:
- Who are they and what position they are taking charge of in your company?
- How many hours they work per day/week? Are they considered “exempt” or not?
- Is there a local practice where basic salary can be split to accommodate an amount earmarked for overtime?
There are many other types of rules you need to learn when hiring foreign labors to your companies, so make sure it is worthy. You might want to read our article about the pros and cons of hiring foreign workers. For the best, you should hire a professional recruitment agency if you are looking for a large number of staff, who will have you save time and money better than do it by yourself.
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