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How to hire remote employees in
No matter where you’re based out of, we can tell you one thing: Norway has different labor laws than your home country (unless your home country is Norway, that is). If you don’t do things right, you’ll be putting your company at the risk of fines—and risk losing the talent you brought onboard. Fortunately, doing things right is pretty easy if you take the right route.
If you want to successfully hire in
Norway
, you have two options:
Laws about hiring contractors are significantly more simple in
Norway
. 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
Norway
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
Norway
.
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
Norway
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
Norway
, 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 Norway 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 Norway
Employees are entitled to four weeks and one day of paid holiday each calendar year.
If the company is bound by a collective agreement, its employees are entitled to five weeks' holiday a year.
Five weeks is the most common arrangement, even in companies that are not bound by a collective agreement.
Annual leave is compensated at a minimum rate of 10.20% of the employee’s total salary, commonly paid in June.
Some collective bargaining agreements will state an increased rate of the vacation payment at 12.00%, and employees over the age of 60 are compensated at 12.50% of their total salary.
There are 10 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 entitled to paid maternity leave for 3 weeks prior to giving birth and must take a leave of absence for the first 6 weeks after birth unless able to provide a medical certificate indicating it is better to resume work.
Female employees are entitled to 59 weeks of paid maternity leave which is compensated by the national insurance.
The national insurance will pay a mother 80.00% of the regular income for 59 weeks of leave. If the employee opts to take a reduced leave of 49 weeks, they will be compensated at 100.00% of their income.
Parents are entitled to a leave of absence for a total of 47 weeks, or up to 57 weeks with reduced benefits, before the child’s third birthday.
Male employees are entitled to 2 weeks’ unpaid paternity leave.
Maternity leave may be split between the mother and father; however, three weeks before the expected due date and six weeks after the birth are reserved for the mother.
A parent can take an additional year of unpaid leave after maternity leave.
Employees who earn more than 480,000 NOK annually are not entitled to paid parental leave.
Occupational injury insurance - an employee is injured in the workplace, they are entitled to compensation up to 72,662 NOK per year. If the employee is unable to work, they will be entitled to disability compensation. The rate of compensation depends on the employee’s incapacity to work.
Employees are entitled to one (1) paid day off on the occasion of their wedding.
There are no laws in Norway that gives day off for funerals. But most companies however do still give you 1 or 2 days off with pay for funerals for close family members
The main form of dismissal is with prior notice. Such dismissal must either be objectively justified on the basis of circumstances relating to the undertaking, the employer or the employee.
If termination is related to curtail or rationalization related to the undertaking, the termination is not objectively justified if the employer has other suitable work in the undertaking to offer the employee.
Furthermore, when deciding whether a dismissal is objectively justified by curtailed operations or rationalization measures, the needs of the undertaking must be weighed against the disadvantage caused by the dismissal for the individual employee.
Additionally, where employees are dismissed on the grounds of circumstances related to the business or organization, the criteria for selection of employees for dismissal must be objectively justified.
An employee who has been dismissed, owing to circumstances relating to the undertaking, has a preferential right to a new appointment at the same undertaking, unless the vacant post is one for which the employee is not qualified.
The statutory notice period for an employer when dismissing an employee varies between 1 and 6 months
There are no statutory provisions on severance or redundancy payment.
The notice period in Norway is:
The statutory notice period for an employer when dismissing an employee varies between 1 and 6 months, depending on the term of employment, age and length of service with the company. It is most common to agree to 3 months’ notice.
Employees giving notice normally have to observe notice periods as agreed to in the employment contract, but these cannot be longer than 3 months.
There are no statutory provisions on severance or redundancy payment.
These can be included in collective agreements.
Probationary periods in Norway are typically between 3 and 6 months.
The standard workday is 9 hours per day, with one hour included for lunch.
The typical Norwegian employee work five day weeks scheduled between 0600 and 1800 and has arranged work between 37 and 38 hours per week.
Any hours worked in excess of 9 hours per day and 40 hours per week are considered overtime and employees must be paid at a premium rate of at least 40% over the normal rate, or provided time off in lieu.
Work hours should not exceed more than 10 hours of overtime per week, 25 hours of overtime per every 4 weeks, and 200 hours of overtime per every 1 year.
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