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How to hire remote employees in
Hiring in Latvia can be confusing, but it’s easier when you know what you’re doing. If you want to hire remote talent in Latvia, you have two options: Hire people as contractors, or hire them as employees.
If you want to successfully hire in
Latvia
, you have two options:
Laws about hiring contractors are significantly more simple in
Latvia
. 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
Latvia
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
Latvia
.
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
Latvia
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
Latvia
, 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 Latvia 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 Latvia.
Every employee is entitled to paid annual leave. This leave may not be shorter than 4 calendar weeks, not including public holidays.
By agreement between the employer and employee, paid annual leave for the current year may be granted in installments, however, one installment of annual leave each year may not be less than 2 uninterrupted calendar weeks.
Cash compensation for annual leave is prohibited, except in cases where an employment relationship is terminated, and an employee has not used up their paid annual leave.
There are 11 public holidays.
The duration of sick leave entitlement provided to workers is dependent on how long they have been employed by their employer:
Female employees are generally entitled to 112 days of maternity leave: 56 before the birth and 56 after, although the employee may use all 112 days regardless of how many she used before the birth.
Social insurance covers the employee’s wages during leave if she is insured.
Fathers are generally entitled to 10 days of paternity leave to be taken with two months of the child’s birth.
There are no provisions in the law regarding paternity leave.
Childcare leave -Every employee has the right to childcare leave for the birth or adoption of a child. Childcare leave lasts 18 months and may be requested at any time until the child reaches the age of 8.
Study leave - An employee who is studying at any form of educational institution while continuing to work may, in accordance with the collective agreement or employment contract, be granted paid or unpaid study leave. Employees sitting state exams, or are writing and defending theses, are granted paid study leave of no less than 20 working days per year.
None.
None.
A contract of employment can be terminated either at the initiative of an employer or an employee.
A contract of employment may also be terminated by expiry of a fixed-term contract, by mutual consent of employer and employee, or pursuant to the request of a third party.
Pursuant to Section 101 of the labor Law, an employer has the right to give a written notice of termination of a contract of employment only on the basis of circumstances related to the conduct of the employee, his or her abilities, or of economic, organizational, technological measures or measures of a similar nature
Prior notice is required to terminate a contract of employment concluded for an indefinite period as well as a fixed-term contract where an employer intends to terminate such contract before the expiry of the term.
An employer, when giving a notice of termination of a contract of employment, shall comply with different time periods, depending on the grounds of dismissal.
The notice of dismissal will take effect either immediately, or 10 days after the notice, or one month after the notice, accordingly to Sections 103 and 101 of the labor Law
In all cases when giving a notice of termination, an employer has a duty to notify an employee in writing those circumstances that serve a basis for the notice of termination of the contract of employment.
The employer has to pay severance pay in accordance with the law.
The notice period in Latvia is:
One month unless the employment contract or collective bargaining agreement provides for a longer period.
Employees are generally eligible for severance payment as follows:
The maximum term of probationary periods is three months.
In general, Latvians work 40 hours per week with 5, 8-hour days.
Work exceeding the daily working time of 8 hours is considered to be overtime.
It is interpreted restrictively and, for instance, where the duration of working time is reduced by agreement, overtime is still computed only after 8 hours of work.
The limit of allowed overtime hours is laid down in Section 136 (5) of the labor Law stipulating that overtime work may not exceed 48 hours within a four-week period and 200 hours within a calendar year.
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