How to hire employees in Poland with an Employer of Record

A Polish hire can start in weeks rather than the months an entity setup usually takes, but the legal structure behind the hire matters. Under Polish law, a provider that employs a worker and assigns them to a client company operates as a temporary work agency, and those assignments carry an 18-month limit.

For employers hiring in Poland in 2026, the key considerations are the engagement structure, KRAZ registration, employer costs, working time and leave, and notice rules. The 2026 minimum wage is PLN 4,806 per month, with employer contributions adding roughly 20.5% above gross salary. Employer of Record is not a separately recognised statutory model in Poland. Employ-and-assign arrangements fall under temporary agency rules, including registration and assignment limits. Boundless, a Payoneer company, supports compliant hiring in Poland through licensed local entities, covering onboarding, payroll, benefits, and employment compliance.

Poland does not have a standalone employer-of-record licence. What it has instead is a regulated-activity regime for employment agencies. An entity that places a worker with a client company and directs that worker to perform work for the client falls inside the definition of an employment agency (agencja zatrudnienia) and must be entered in the Krajowy Rejestr Agencji Zatrudnienia (KRAZ) before it provides any services. Registration sits with the Marshal of the voivodeship where the entity has its registered office, and applications run electronically through the STOR system.

The governing statute changed recently. The Act of 20 March 2025 on the Labour Market and Employment Services replaced the 2004 Employment Promotion Act as the framework for KRAZ and agency regulation. The current fee for entry in the register is PLN 1,000. The PLN 200 figure that still circulates refers to the older certificate issuance rather than the register entry itself, which is the source of most of the confusion in secondary guidance on employment agency registration.

Operating as an unregistered agency is not a paperwork oversight. It carries fines from upto PLN 100,000. Entry conditions include no outstanding tax or ZUS arrears, no bankruptcy or liquidation proceedings, no relevant criminal record, and no KRAZ removal in the preceding three years. Foreign entities face one further constraint worth knowing about: they may direct foreign nationals to work in Poland after two years of active KRAZ-registered operation, not before.

The sequence below reflects the standard route when a provider employs the worker through a Polish entity. Timelines tend to be driven by document collection rather than by the registration steps themselves.

1. Confirm the engagement model first: Establish whether the role is structurally employment or genuine contracting. Genuine contractors can be engaged through an Agent of Record model, while roles carrying employer direction and control belong in an employment contract.
2. Identify the employing entity and its status: Ask which Polish entity signs the contract, whether it is KRAZ-registered, and whether the placement runs as an agency assignment or as direct Labour Code employment.
3. Agree the gross salary against the 2026 floor: Set gross monthly pay at or above PLN 4,806, remembering that overtime pay, night-work supplements, seniority allowances, and anniversary awards do not count toward satisfying the floor.
4. Issue the written employment contract before work begins: Polish law requires written form; where a contract has not been signed, the employer must confirm the terms in writing before the employee starts work.
5. Deliver the mandatory employment-conditions information within seven days: The 2023 reform expanded the required disclosures and re-based the deadline to seven days from the employee being admitted to work.
6. Register the employee with ZUS and set up monthly payroll: ZUS declarations and PIT advances run monthly, with annual reconciliation filings at year-end.
7. Handle PPK auto-enrolment: Employees aged 18 to 54 are auto-enrolled unless they opt out, with employees aged 55 to 70 enrolling by declaration.

Effective 1 January 2026, the statutory floor rose to PLN 4,806 gross per month and PLN 31.40 gross per hour for civil-law contracts. The 2026 minimum wage was set by a Council of Ministers regulation, and for the first time since 2023 it applies as a single rate across the full calendar year with no mid-year adjustment. The increase of PLN 140, around 3%, is the smallest under the current uprating regime.

The accident-insurance rate varies by ZUS-assigned industry risk category and company size. Employers with up to nine employees pay 50% of the highest applicable rate rather than receiving their own risk-assessed rate. For 2026, the annual contribution base cap is PLN 282,600.

PPK adds a standard employer contribution of 1.5% of gross salary, with an optional voluntary top-up of up to 2.5%. Employer PPK contributions are treated as taxable income for the employee.

On the employee side:

• ZUS contributions: 13.71% of gross
• Health contribution: 9% of gross pay after social security contributions
• Income tax: 12% up to PLN 120,000 of annual taxable income and 32% above that
• Tax-free amount: PLN 30,000, delivered through a PLN 3,600 annual tax reduction

Because employee ZUS contributions and standard cost deductions reduce the taxable base, the 32% tax band typically begins at around PLN 140,000 of gross salary.

Poland’s standard working-time rules are:

• 8 hours per day
• 40 hours per week within the applicable settlement period
• 150 hours of overtime per year, unless a collective or company agreement allows more

Annual leave is based on counted seniority:

• 20 days per year for employees with less than 10 years of seniority
• 26 days per year once seniority reaches 10 years

Completed education counts toward seniority. A university degree adds eight years, so a graduate with two years of work history may qualify for 26 days from the start. Poland also has 14 statutory public holidays following the 2025 addition of Christmas Eve.

For sick leave, the employer pays the first 33 days of incapacity in a calendar year at 80% of remuneration, reduced to 14 days for employees aged 50 and over. ZUS then takes over at the same rate. Pay rises to 100% for workplace accidents, pregnancy, and specified contagious illness. Total entitlement is 182 days, extending to 270 days for tuberculosis or pregnancy-related incapacity.

Statutory notice scales with tenure at the employer and cannot be shortened by contract to the employee’s disadvantage:

Notice periods in Poland follow specific end dates: weekly notice ends on a Saturday, while monthly notice ends on the last calendar day of the month. Since the 2023 reform, employers must also provide a written reason for terminating fixed-term and indefinite contracts and consult any workplace trade union where required.

For probationary contracts:

• The maximum probation period is three months.
• It can generally be used once per employee, with a narrow exception for a materially different role.
• Since 2023, the permitted probation length is linked to the fixed-term contract expected to follow.
• Probation notice is 3 working days for periods up to two weeks, 1 week for longer probation periods, and 2 weeks for a three-month probation.

Severance applies at employers with 20 or more employees where dismissal is for reasons not attributable to the employee. It is:

• 1 month’s remuneration for less than two years of service
• 2 months’ remuneration for two to eight years
• 3 months’ remuneration for more than eight years

Severance is capped at 15 times the applicable minimum wage, which at the 2026 floor is roughly PLN 72,090.

Key employment-law developments carrying into 2026 include:

• Minimum wage: PLN 4,806 per month and PLN 31.40 per hour from 1 January 2026.
• Agency regulation: The Act of 20 March 2025 on the Labour Market and Employment Services replaced the 2004 statute governing employment agencies and KRAZ registration.
• Remote work: The Labour Code rules continue to cover hybrid and fully remote work, including up to 24 days of occasional remote work per year on employee request and employer reimbursement for energy and telecom costs.
• Whistleblower protection: Employers with 50 or more employees must maintain an internal reporting channel, with retaliation damages set at a minimum of six months’ salary.

A separate amendment dated 4 December 2025, modifying the Labour Code and Company Social Benefits Fund Act, entered into force on 27 January 2026. Because it affects both statutes, its specific provisions should be reviewed before relying on it for a particular policy decision.

1. Assuming an agency assignment can run indefinitely: The 18-month ceiling within a rolling 36-month window is statutory. A placement structured as an agency assignment and left to run past it creates a problem that a contract clause cannot fix.
2. Applying the 33-month fixed-term rule to the wrong relationship: The three-contract and 33-month caps convert a relationship to indefinite employment by operation of law the day after the threshold is crossed, but they do not apply to agency-to-temporary-worker contracts. Employers who apply the wrong rule to the wrong structure misjudge when conversion happens.
3. Budgeting leave at 20 days for a graduate hire: Education credit toward the 10-year seniority threshold means many first-time hires are entitled to 26 days rather than 20. Building the offer on 20 days creates a shortfall that surfaces in the first leave year.
4. Treating the accident-insurance rate as fixed: The 0.67% to 3.33% range is assigned by industry risk category. A cost model built on the 1.67% average can understate the loaded cost by more than a percentage point of gross.
5. Missing the seven-day information deadline: The 2023 reform re-based the deadline to seven days from the employee being admitted to work, not from contract signature, and widened what has to be disclosed.