How to hire employees in Belgium with an Employer of Record

Hiring in Belgium without a local entity is entirely possible, and for most foreign companies it is the faster, lower-risk route. An Employer of Record in Belgium becomes the legal employer of your worker, taking on payroll, social security filings, the employment contract, and compliance with one of Europe’s most protective labour codes. You direct the work. The Employer of Record carries the legal employment.

Belgium rewards that division of labour more than most markets. Employer social security runs to roughly 25 to 27% of gross salary, probation periods were abolished in 2014, and the notice rules scale week by week with tenure. Get any of it wrong and the cost lands on you, not the worker. This guide explains how hiring through an Employer of Record works in Belgium, what it costs in 2026, and the compliance changes that took effect this year.

For the full statutory detail behind the figures here, our guide to hiring and compliance in Belgium sets out the country rules in depth.

An Employer of Record is a company that already holds the legal infrastructure to employ people in Belgium. When you hire through one, the Employer of Record signs the Belgian employment contract, registers the worker with the National Social Security Office, runs payroll in euros, withholds income tax and social contributions, and administers statutory leave and benefits. The worker does your work and reports to your team. On paper, they are employed by the Employer of Record.

That structure matters in Belgium because the compliance burden is front-loaded and unforgiving. Contracts interact with sector-level collective labour agreements that can override individual terms. Social security filings are monthly and electronic. Termination follows a statutory notice scale measured in weeks. An Employer of Record absorbs all of it and stands behind the compliance, which is the difference between hiring in Belgium in days and spending months on entity setup.

The process is consistent across most Employer of Record providers, and it moves quickly once the commercial terms are agreed.

First, you choose the candidate and agree the salary, role, and start date. The Employer of Record then drafts a compliant Belgian employment contract reflecting the mandatory terms under Belgian law and any applicable collective labour agreement, including salary, working time, and notice provisions. Belgian law allows some open-ended full-time contracts to be concluded verbally, but a written contract is standard practice and protects both sides.

Next, the worker is registered with the Belgian authorities, including the National Social Security Office and the tax administration. The Employer of Record sets up payroll, and from the first pay cycle it withholds the employee’s 13.07% social security contribution and income tax, pays the employer contributions on top, and remits everything to the authorities. From there the Employer of Record manages the employment lifecycle, including leave, benefits, payslips, and any changes to terms.

You keep day-to-day direction of the work. The Employer of Record keeps the legal employer obligations.

The headline cost of employing someone in Belgium is the employer social security contribution, which adds roughly 25 to 27% on top of gross salary for white-collar employees. Blue-collar contributions run higher. These cover pension, healthcare and disability, unemployment insurance, workplace accidents, occupational disease, family allowances, and holiday pay.

A few components deserve attention when you budget. Holiday pay in Belgium includes double holiday pay, an extra payment made when an employee takes their main annual leave, which means the real annual cost of a Belgian hire sits above twelve times the monthly gross.

The guaranteed minimum monthly income is 2,189.81 euros gross from 1 April 2026 for employees aged 18 and over, up from 2,154.11 euros at the start of the year, though most sector agreements set higher floors. Meal vouchers are a near-universal benefit, and from 1 January 2026 the maximum employer-funded portion exempt from tax and social security rose to 8.91 euros per day worked. For the full picture of what employer and employee contributions cover, see our breakdown of Belgian social security contributions for 2026.

We do not publish a fixed cost table here because the total depends on salary, sector agreement, and benefit structure, and the figures move. To model a specific salary, use the Boundless cost calculator, which breaks down employer contributions and employee net pay for Belgium.

You do not need to master Belgian labour law to hire through an Employer of Record, but a few rules shape what is and is not possible.

There is no probation period. The Unified Employment Status Act abolished trial periods in 2014, so standard notice rules apply from day one of an indefinite contract. This is a common surprise for employers used to a three- or six-month probationary window, and it makes getting the hire right at the outset more important.

The standard working week is 38 hours, with a daily limit generally of 8 hours. Overtime is permitted within limits and is compensated at a premium, and night work between 8pm and 6am is restricted. Annual leave is a statutory minimum of 20 working days for a five-day week, accrued during the previous calendar year.

Notice periods are being reformed. Statutory notice scales in weekly increments with length of service, and under legislation adopted in 2026 a cap of 52 weeks applies to employer-initiated dismissal for contracts entered into from 1 July 2026.

Because the cap only bites once an employee reaches around 17 years of service, its practical effect is years away, and contracts predating the reform stay on the older uncapped scale, where notice for long-serving employees can exceed a year. For most new hires the immediate point is simpler. A shortened notice period applies during the first six months of a permanent contract. The detail sits in our guide to employee rights and termination in Belgium.

An Employer of Record fits when you want to employ a small number of people in Belgium without committing to a local entity, when you need to move quickly, or when you want the compliance risk carried by a specialist rather than your own team. It suits testing a new market, employing a single senior hire, or building a distributed European team where Belgium is one of several countries.

It is less suited to very large headcounts in a single country over many years, where the per-employee cost of an Employer of Record eventually outweighs the cost of running your own entity. The crossover point depends on numbers and time horizon, and a good provider will tell you honestly when you have reached it.

A few questions separate a capable Employer of Record from a risky one.