US companies hiring in the Netherlands: what changes

Because a US offer letter records what the two sides agreed, and a Dutch arbeidsovereenkomst records what the two sides agreed plus everything Boek 7 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek adds to it. The second list is longer than the first, and none of it can be edited out.

For a US employer that is the whole adjustment in one sentence. Nothing about the hiring process feels unfamiliar. The salary negotiation, the start date, the role: all of it works the way it works in Denver. What changes is that the document being signed carries statutory content the employer never drafted, and that content is what determines the cost and the risk of the relationship for as long as it lasts.

It also means the usual US levers do not work. You cannot fix a Dutch problem by rewriting the employment agreement, because the parts causing the problem are not in the agreement. You cannot fix it with an indemnity either, since the duties run to the employee rather than between the companies. What you can do is know what the statutory terms are before you commit to a salary, because they are the real cost of the hire.

The three items below are the ones that most consistently catch a US buyer out, in the order in which they tend to hurt. Each of them is a matter of statute, so it applies to the first hire as fully as to the hundredth.

Prior permission from a third party. Under article 7:669(1) BW an employer may terminate an indefinite arbeidsovereenkomst only where there is a reasonable ground from an exhaustive statutory list, and only where redeployment into another suitable role, if necessary with training, is not possible or not reasonable. That ground then has to be approved before notice can be given.

Approval comes from UWV, the employee insurance agency, for redundancy and long-term incapacity, or from the kantonrechter for the other grounds. There is no at-will dismissal in the Netherlands and no paying in lieu of the process. A US employer cannot decide on Monday that a role ends on Friday, however generous the cheque.

A UWV permission, once granted, is valid for only four weeks, and the employer must then give notice in writing stating the reason. Any clause purporting to exclude the duty to seek permission, or to extend that four-week window, is void.

The practical effect on a US business is a change of timing rather than of outcome. Dutch employment relationships do end. They end through an agreed route, on a timetable set partly by somebody else, and a commercial settlement is usually part of the picture. What disappears is the ability to act unilaterally and pay for the privilege afterwards, which is the assumption every US performance-management playbook is built on.

The rest of it, the nine grounds, redeployment, the opzegtermijn and the transitievergoeding, is a subject in its own right. US and Dutch termination rules side by side is the place to read it against what a US employer is used to.

104 weeks. Under article 7:629 BW an employee who cannot work through illness keeps the right to 70% of wage for up to two years, and the employer pays it, not the state.

That sentence tends to be read twice. It is not a short-term disability policy with an insurer behind it and it is not statutory sick pay reimbursed by government. It is a direct obligation on the employer, running for two years from the first day of incapacity, for an employee who may never return.

Alongside it runs a prohibition on giving notice during the same period, under article 7:670(1) BW. So the employer pays for two years and, for the same two years, generally cannot end the contract. The combination is the single largest liability in Dutch employment and the one US buyers most consistently fail to price.

Two consequences follow for a US buyer specifically. The first is that the duty does not scale with headcount, so a single Dutch hire carries it in full and a company with one employee in the Netherlands has the same two-year exposure as one with fifty. The second is that it is a reason the arrangement exists at all: for most US companies this is the obligation they least want sitting on their own balance sheet for a first hire.

There is detail underneath all of that: a minimum-wage floor in the first year, a cap on the wage covered, the grounds on which payment can be suspended, and a statutory reintegration programme with dated milestones running alongside the payment duty. the Dutch sick pay rules for 2026 covers the payment duty in full.

No. Dutch public holidays are not statutory paid days off. Rijksoverheid puts it plainly: they do not appear in the law as compulsory free days. Whether a holiday is paid, and whether taking it comes out of the employee’s holiday entitlement, is decided entirely by the CAO or the arbeidsovereenkomst.

There are eleven official holidays in 2026: Nieuwjaarsdag on 1 January, Goede Vrijdag on 3 April, Eerste and Tweede Paasdag on 5 and 6 April, Koningsdag on 27 April, Bevrijdingsdag on 5 May, Hemelvaartsdag on 14 May, Eerste and Tweede Pinksterdag on 24 and 25 May, and Eerste and Tweede Kerstdag on 25 and 26 December. Goede Vrijdag and Bevrijdingsdag are the two most often worked outside the public sector. The official list is published by Rijksoverheid.

Annual leave is the opposite case: entirely statutory, and written in hours rather than days. Article 7:634(1) BW gives an employee a minimum entitlement of four times their agreed weekly working hours for each full year. A 40-hour employee accrues 160 hours, which is 20 days. A 20-hour employee accrues 80 hours, which is also 20 days.

The two tiers matter as well. Statutory days lapse six months after the end of the calendar year in which they were accrued, so on 30 June of the following year, unless the employee was reasonably unable to take them. Contractual days above the statutory minimum run under a five-year limitation period under article 7:642 BW. A US employer that tracks one pooled balance will get both ends of that wrong.

For a US employer used to an unlimited or discretionary vacation policy, the practical change is that Dutch leave is an accrued balance with a cash value. Untaken entitlement is paid out when the employment ends, under article 7:641 BW, and the employer has to issue a statement of what is outstanding.

Statutory employer charges run from 16,55% to 28,60% of gross pay in 2026, with 16,77% the typical figure for a small employer on a permanent written contract in business services. The spread is mostly contract type: a fixed-term or on-call contract adds 5,00 percentage points on the unemployment premium alone.

The shape of it is more useful to a US buyer than the number. Every employer charge stops at € 79.409 of pay for 2026, so the percentage falls as the salary rises. A senior Dutch hire carries proportionally less employer overhead than a junior one, which is the reverse of the intuition most US cost models are built on.

Two additions sit outside that range and both are real. Vakantiegeld at 8% under article 15 WML is pay rather than a social charge and is normally quoted on top of salary. And every figure here assumes no CAO applies and no occupational pension scheme is compulsory, either of which can add a substantial employer cost that no statutory percentage captures.

One thing is genuinely simpler than in the US. Dutch health cover is not an employer benefit to be designed or brokered. The employer pays a levy of 6,10% for 2026 inside the charges above, and every Dutch resident buys basic health insurance personally, out of net pay. A whole category of US employer spend and administration has no Dutch equivalent.

The full comparison, built on a worked salary with every assumption stated, is in US versus Dutch employer costs. This post is about what the contract obliges you to; that one is about what it costs.

Through an Employer of Record, which becomes the legal employer of the person you have chosen. Your business keeps the work, the role, the pay and the decision about when the role ends. The arbeidsovereenkomst sits with the employer named on it, which runs payroll in euro, withholds and files loonheffingen, applies statutory leave under article 7:634 BW and carries the 104-week sick pay duty under article 7:629 BW.

You hire in the Netherlands without registering a company of your own there, and without your finance team learning which of five employer charges is set by an annual Belastingdienst decision. The alternative is your own Dutch B.V., which gives you control and adds a notarial deed, a Handelsregister entry, an employer registration and a payroll function to run permanently.

Employer of Record Netherlands sets out what the arrangement covers, and the fee starts at €599 per employee per month. Employment from day one, on a Dutch contract, for a person you have already picked.

One American assumption is worth checking early. A US employer used to setting a return-to-office policy by memo will find that the Dutch position on where someone works is neither an employer prerogative nor an employee right, and our post on remote work in the Netherlands explains what actually governs it.