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How to hire remote employees in
So you want to hire in Belgium. You’ll have to make a decision: Do you want to hire your new remote talent as employees, or do you want to hire them as contractors? Conventional wisdom might say employees, but hiring abroad is hardly conventional—below, we’ll cover what you need to know about your options.
If you want to successfully hire in
Belgium
, you have two options:
Laws about hiring contractors are significantly more simple in
Belgium
. Onboarding talent takes days, not weeks or months. Both you, the company, and your talent have more flexibility. And in many cases, since you’re remote, the talent you’re hiring is better classified as a contractor, anyway. Of course, it’s not possible in every case, but it’s what we built Thera for.
This is the long route. You can either establish a physical presence with an entity and register as an employer, or you can use an Employer-of-Record (EOR) solution. Odds are, you’ll find using an EOR to be the easier route. Still, using an EOR in
Belgium
is expensive—it can often be $500 per month per employee—and sometimes prone to lengthy onboarding times.
Hiring contractors is normally the easier, faster, more flexible choice—but don’t just take it from us. Below are the specific benefits and drawbacks to hiring contractors in
Belgium
.
Hiring employees takes months, at the minimum. When you hire with Thera's locally-generated contracts, it’s a matter of days or weeks. This means you can hire the best talent, fast, without losing them to a hellish procession of paperwork.
It costs just $0 to sign up for Thera, then $25 per month to hire your contractors with Thera. If you hired employees manually (or did contracting on your own), you’d likely be on the hook for thousands of dollars each month. Setting up an entity alone can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Hiring contractors in
Belgium
means you’re generally not on the hook for things like health insurance and paid time off. This makes hiring flexible for you, and it gives your talent more options.
Hiring employees is a bigger commitment, and can open you up to increased liabilities and regulations. When you hire contractors overseas, your biggest risk is misclassification—but laws surrounding contractor classification are often significantly more straightforward.
The contractor life isn’t for everyone—some people want the security that being an employee often appears to provide. Though it’s rare, this does happen, and it’s one disadvantage of manage an all-contractor team.
Most countries’ contractor-employer relationship laws stipulate that the employer can’t set fixed working hours, among other things. These laws give contractors more freedom over how and when they do their work than an employee would have. In reality, however, most contractors are willing & able to work on the company’s schedule—it’s a matter of setting expectations beforehand.
If you’re hiring contractors in
Belgium
, you can pay them with Thera in a single click. You won’t need to worry about complicated wire transfers, fees, or currency conversions. We’ll take care of it all. Just make a click and your contractor will get paid in their currency of choice. This is a valuable bonus for talent in countries where the local currency is particularly weak—most people appreciate the ability to receive their payment in stronger currencies.
If you’ve read up until this point, you’ll know that it’s easier, cheaper, and more flexible to hire contractors in Belgium than employees. Still, there are valid reasons why you might want to hire employees instead. The content below is for you—we’ll cover employer taxes and obligations in Belgium.
Employee’s annual leave entitlement in a given year is determined by the number of days worked. Employees are entitled to 20 to 24 days of annual leave, depending on their working regime (i.e., For a 5-day week, the entitlement would be 20 days paid annual leave and for a 6-day week 24 days).
Employees are entitled to remuneration for ten official public holidays. If a public holiday falls on a Sunday or on a day the employee does not usually work, the employer must grant a replacement rest day.
There are 10 public holidays. An extra holiday may be applicable according to the Joint Labour Committee.
The duration of sick leave entitlement provided to workers is dependent on how long they have been employed by their employer:
Maternity leave is 15 weeks long and is broken down into 2 stages:
For multiple births, the mother is entitled to an additional 2 weeks of maternity leave.
The Health Insurance Fund pays for the maternity leave as follows:
The father is entitled to 15 days of paid paternity leave. The 15 days can be taken separately or in a row as well as split up to up to 30 half-days.
The first 3 days of the leave are paid by the employer and the remaining leave is paid by the Health Insurance Fund at a rate of 82% of the regular pay.
Parental leave can start from any time from the end of the post-natal maternity leave and can be taken as follows:
Family care, to assist a seriously ill household or family member, depending on the various Joint Labour Committees:
Depending on the various Joint Labour Committees, leave might be given for the marriage of the employee or family member.
In Belgium, employees are entitled to paid leave due to a death of a family member.
The termination process varies according to how the employment agreement.
The strictest form of dismissal is dismissal with notice.
Employees who have been employed for at least 6 months have the right to know the reason for the termination.
The notice period in Belgium is:
Notice period varies based on the length of employment:
It is also possible to pay in lieu of notice.
The Severance Pay in Belgium:
Severance pay is only applicable when an employer terminated an employment agreement without notice. In this case, the severance pay would be for the same amount the employee would earn if they were given notice.
Probation period is 6 months.
The maximum full workweek in Belgium is 38 hours.
Depending on some Joint Labour Committees, the number of working hours can be lower, however, the minimum number of hours per day is 3.
Overtime is strictly regulated and in general, prohibited.
When employees work overtime, they are paid at the rate of 150% of the regular pay during weekdays and 200% for work on weekends or public holidays.
Rules on overtime and working hours do not apply to some jobs such as sales, managerial roles, and trust roles.
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