Switzerland
Found someone in Switzerland you’d like to hire? You’re in the right place. In the next few minutes, you’ll learn how to hire remote talent in Switzerland, without wading into thousands of dollars of legal fees and months of legal red tape.
Country snapshot
CURRENCY
Swiss Franc (CHF)
EMPLOYER TAXES
9.463%
PAYROLL FREQUENCY
Monthly
OFFICIAL LANGUAGE
German, French, Italian and Romansh
It’s the fastest way to hire globally
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’s a lot cheaper
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.
It’s more flexible for you & your team
Can be less risky than hiring employees
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.
Some people want to be employees
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.
You might not have as much control over your talent
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.
So you want to hire in Switzerland. That’s great. But you should know that hiring in Switzerland is different from hiring in your home country. There’s a whole laundry list of labor laws to catch up on, lawyers to contract, compliance issues to navigate… And it can get complex. So we’ll break it down in simple terms.
Hire talent as contractors
Hire talent as employees
If you’ve read up until this point, you’ll know that it’s easier, cheaper, and more flexible to hire contractors in Switzerland 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 Switzerland.
Employer tax
Employer Contributions
- 9.463%
Paid Time Off (PTO)
Employees over the age of 20 receive 4 weeks of paid holiday. Under the age of 20, they receive 5 weeks of paid holiday.
Public Holidays
Geneva has 9 public holidays.
Sick Days
Employees are entitled to continuous salary payments for a certain period of time depending on their years of service (three weeks during the first year of service). Alternatively, employers may take out a daily benefits insurance scheme, under which employees usually receive 80% of their last salary for a maximum of 720 days.
Maternity Leave
Maternity allowance is given to employees who have contributed to the OASI for at least 9 months preceding the delivery and have worked for at least five months.
Mothers (both full-time and part-time employees) are paid 80% of their wages in the form of a daily allowance for 98 days (up to a maximum cap of SFr 196 per day). However, Geneva law provides an additional two weeks, amounting to a total of 16 weeks.
Paternity Leave
Fathers in Switzerland are entitled to 10 days of paid paternity leave. They can take paternity leave in a single period or as individual days but must use the leave within six months after the baby’s birth.
Paternity leave benefits will equal 80% of the employee’s average salary prior to the baby’s birth but will be capped at a total of CHF2,744, or CHF196 per day.
Termination Process
Termination in Switzerland has the principle of freedom of dismissal, making it possible to terminate a contract of employment without there being an important reason, provided that such termination is not discriminatory or abusive. The reason for the dismissal must be explained when the other party requests it. Even if the dismissal is valid through oral termination, it is advisable to do so in writing for evidentiary purposes.
Notice Period
Termination is considered legally valid from the moment the recipient receives it.
The statutory notice periods are as follows:
- 7 days during the trial period
- 1 month during the first year of service
- 2 months during the second to the ninth year of service
- 3 months from the tenth year of service
Alternatively, the parties can contractually agree on a notice period.
A fixed-term employment contract ends on the expiry of the agreed period.
Severance Pay
An employee is entitled to severance pay if it is stated in their contract, or if they are over the age of 50 and have worked in the company for at least 20 consecutive years. Severance payment is two month’s of salary.
Working Hours
Contractually agreed working hours are 40 or 42 hours per week. Depending on the field of work, the maximum number of working hours a week is either 45 or 50 hours.
Overtime
Overtime work is compensated at 125% of the regular pay rate, or time off is given in lieu of payment.
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