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How to hire remote employees in
Sure, the lifestyle in The Bahamas may be laid back. But that doesn’t mean the labor laws are. Before you hire, you’ll need to know your options, and there are two: Hire employees, or hire contractors. Here are the differences:
If you want to successfully hire in
Bahamas
, you have two options:
Laws about hiring contractors are significantly more simple in
Bahamas
. 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
Bahamas
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
Bahamas
.
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
Bahamas
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
Bahamas
, 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 The Bahamas 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 The Bahamas
In Bahamas, employees with 12 months of consecutive employment are entitled to a minimum of two weeks’ paid leave:
There are 10 public holidays.
Employees with six months of consecutive employment are entitled to one week’s sick leave per year.
Female employees receive 60 days of maternity leave. The maternity benefits are paid for the 60 days of the maternity leave, half of each can be taken before the birth.
Female workers with more than 12 weeks of employment are entitled to nine weeks of maternity leave.
Other than the mentioned terms for maternity leave, there are no comprehensive provisions in the Bahamas law regarding paternity leave.
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According to General Orders 1621, Compassionate leave may be granted by a Permanent Secretary on the grounds of urgent personal affairs, such as accident, death and serious illness of immediate family, and emergencies caused by fire or flooding, up to a maximum of 8 days per annum.
Employers in the Bahamas can terminate employees provided they offer them the required notice or severance compensation.
The employee can build a wrongful dismissal case if the employer does not meet the above statutory clauses.
Employers have the right to termination when employees breach the terms of the employment contract or work against the organizational interest of the employer. In such cases, the employer is not statutorily required to give any notice to the employee or pay him severance compensation.
Also called summary dismissal, these happen on the following grounds:
The notice period in Bahamas is:
The Severance Pay in Bahamas;
There is no statutory probation period in the Bahamas. However;
The standard work week in Bahamas is 40 hours per week.
Employees in the industrial, construction, manufacturing, transportation, law enforcement, and vital services industries may be required to work longer hours.
By law, any employee working for more than 40 hours a week or 8 hours a day is entitled to overtime pay.
This should be one and a half times their regular pay or twice their normal pay rate if they are working overtime on a public holiday.
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