How to hire remote employees in

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.
Book Demo

Country snapshot

CURRENCY
Swiss Franc (CHF)
EMPLOYER TAXES
9.463%
PAYROLL FREQUENCY
Monthly
OFFICIAL LANGUAGE
German, French, Italian and Romansh

What to know before you hire in 

Switzerland

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.

If you want to successfully hire in 

Switzerland

, you have two options:

Hire talent as contractors

Laws about hiring contractors are significantly more simple in 

Switzerland

. 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.

Hire talent as employees

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 

Switzerland

 is expensive—it can often be $500 per month per employee—and sometimes prone to lengthy onboarding times.

Why hire independent contractors in 

Switzerland

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 

Switzerland

.

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

Hiring contractors in 

Switzerland

 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.

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.

How can I pay people in 

Switzerland

?

If you’re hiring contractors in 

Switzerland

, 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.

Hiring and paying your team in 

Switzerland

Hire and pay with Panther

Pay everyone with a single click
Get great currency conversion rates
Pay $0 in platform fees
Run payroll in seconds
Let Panther automatically create & store invoices
Let Panther automatically write locally-compliant contracts
Let Panther automatically file local tax documents

Hire and pay without Panther

Pay all your contractors individually
Do all currency conversions yourself
Shoulder the burden of platform fees
Spend hours each month making payments
Manually track & store invoices
Manually write & sign contracts
Manually file relevant tax documents

If you want to hire employees in 

Switzerland

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.

Taxes in 

Switzerland

Employer tax

Employer Contributions

  • 9.463%

Individual tax

Leave

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

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.

Employee requirements in 

Switzerland

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.

How to hire remote employees in

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.
Sign Up

Country snapshot

CURRENCY
Swiss Franc (CHF)
EMPLOYER TAXES
9.463%
PAYROLL FREQUENCY
Monthly
OFFICIAL LANGUAGE
German, French, Italian and Romansh

What to know before you hire in 

Switzerland

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.

If you want to successfully hire in 

Switzerland

, you have two options:

Hire talent as contractors

Laws about hiring contractors are significantly more simple in 

Switzerland

. 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 Panther for.

Hire talent as employees

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 

Switzerland

 is expensive—it can often be $500 per month per employee—and sometimes prone to lengthy onboarding times.

Why hire independent contractors in 

Switzerland

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 

Switzerland

.

It’s the fastest way to hire globally

Hiring employees takes months, at the minimum. When you hire with Panther’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 Panther, then $49 per month to hire your contractors with Panther. 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

Hiring contractors in 

Switzerland

 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.

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.

How can I pay people in 

Switzerland

?

If you’re hiring contractors in 

Switzerland

, you can pay them with Panther 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.

Hiring and paying your team in 

Switzerland

Hire and pay with Panther

Pay everyone with a single click
Get great currency conversion rates
Pay $0 in platform fees
Run payroll in seconds
Let Panther automatically create & store invoices
Let Panther automatically write locally-compliant contracts
Let Panther automatically file local tax documents

Hire and pay without Panther

Pay all your contractors individually
Do all currency conversions yourself
Shoulder the burden of platform fees
Spend hours each month making payments
Manually track & store invoices
Manually write & sign contracts
Manually file relevant tax documents

Let Panther save you from hiring headaches.

Sign up today for $0

If you want to hire employees in 

Switzerland

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.

Taxes in 

Switzerland

Employer tax

Employer Contributions

  • 9.463%

Individual tax

Leave

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

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.

Employee requirements in 

Switzerland

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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