No matter where you’re based out of, we can tell you one thing: New Zealand has different labor laws than your home country (unless your home country is New Zealand, 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
New Zealand
, you have two options:
Laws about hiring contractors are significantly more simple in
New Zealand
. 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 Panther 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
New Zealand
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
New Zealand
.
Hiring employees takes months, at the minimum. When you hire with Panther’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 Panther, then $49 per month to hire your contractors with Panther. 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
New Zealand
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
New Zealand
, you can pay them with Panther 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 New Zealand 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 New Zealand
PTO is calculated by the:
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:
Known as primary care leave, mothers are entitled to 26 weeks of maternity leave and are paid between $177.00 to $585.80 by the government per week before tax.
Known a partners leave, a spouse or partner is given one-week unpaid leave after six months of employment and two weeks of unpaid leave after 12 months of employment.
Leave can be taken any time within the period of 21 days before or after the birth.
Parental leave in New Zealand covers maternity and paternity leave and is comprised of primary care leave, special leave, partners leave, extended leave, and negotiated career leave.
Special Leave-10 days of unpaid leave are given for pregnancy-related appointments.
Extended Leave – This is extended unpaid leave given to parents and depends on the amount of time an employee has worked. 52 extra weeks can be taken for a parent who has been employed for at least 12 months, and 26 weeks is given to a parent who has been employed for at least 6 months.
None.
None.
In the event of a termination of a local employee, the employee’s salary must be paid:
An employer must tell their employee in advance when the employer is going to end the employee’s employment (unless the employer is going to dismiss the employee without notice for serious misconduct).
Just because an employment agreement contains a notice period doesn’t mean that the employer can dismiss the employee for any reason as long as they give the appropriate notice.
The employer must still have a good reason and must follow a fair process.
This also includes fixed-term agreements.
The notice period in New Zealand is:
An employee must tell their employer in advance when they want to leave employment (generally outlined in the employment agreement). Depending on the role 2 to 4 weeks’ notice is often seen as fair.
Notice of redundancy
If there is no specific clause in an employment agreement giving a period of notice in a redundancy situation, ‘reasonable notice’ must be given. The length of ‘reasonable notice’ depends on a variety of factors, such as:
the amount of compensation being paid (if any).
Severance payments include the hours worked until the final day and any unused annual leave or days in lieu payments.
Additional payments are either specified in the employment agreement or negotiated as a part of the leaving package.
If employees do not receive all components of their payments, they may file a claim for unpaid salary or other breaches of the employment agreement.
Only an employer with 19 or fewer employees (at the beginning of the day on which the employment agreement is entered into) may employ a new employee on a trial period for the first 90 calendar days of their employment.
A valid trial period must be agreed to in the employment agreement before the employee starts work, or the trial period is invalid.
A trial period must have a valid notice period in the employment contract, can be used in any industry and for any job and must be agreed by the employer and employee in good faith – an employee can’t be forced into being employed on a trial period.
Employers can test the skills of a new employee or a current employee moving to a new position through using a probation period. Probation periods can last for any amount of time (the standard length is around three to six months) but the length of time must be recorded in the employment agreement.
New Zealand does not have a minimum requirement. Common full-time hours are 7.5 hours to 8.0 hours per day.
The hours that are agreed to in an employment agreement are generally the only hours that an employee needs to be present at work.
Overtime hours and pay should be included in the employment agreement.
Many employees receive a payment if their employer asks them to work more than their normal hours.
However, there is no legal requirement to pay more than the regular salary for overtime.
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