Hire In Greece

Challenges of Hiring in Greece

While globalization has become necessary in today’s business world, it comes with unique hiring challenges. The same holds for Greece. 

Despite its competitive labor costs and highly qualified talent, employers often find themselves in a difficult position when hiring in Greece. 

1. Administrative hurdles (Documentation, Work Visa)

Most employers need help navigating visa requirements in Greece. This is especially true for individuals not registered as official European Union (EU) citizens.

While the Greece Digital Nomad Visa can help, it comes with stringent requirements. 

For example, every potential employee must adhere to specific criteria related to income threshold and health insurance. 

Consulting with legal experts can be a wise decision in such situations, but it requires a significant investment of money and energy. 

2. Non-compliance with Greek labor law

Labor laws in Greece comprise several strict rules and regulations that employers often find challenging to enforce. 

This is especially true when you do not have the proper legal team or expertise to guide you. 

Some of the most common provisions that are included in the employment laws of Greece include,

• Employees in Greece are entitled to 20-31 days of annual paid leave, depending on their tenure of employment and the number of days they work in a week.
• Other leave entitlements include paternity leave, sick leave, maternity leave, etc.
• Overtime is limited to five hours per week if it's a five-day employment system and eight hours per week for a six-day employment system.
• Employees are legally mandated to receive 13th and 14th month salary every year.
• The notice period during termination of employment ranges from one to three months.

3. Skilled employee gap 

While Greece has a highly educated population, there is a gap in the skills required to fulfill job requirements. 

Most employers in Greece feel that the education system is insufficient to provide young people with the skills necessary to compete for jobs. 

Let’s examine some crucial statistics related to this.

• As many as 44% of businesses in Greece struggle to find qualified enough candidates for job positions. 
• In a recently conducted survey, four out of ten entrepreneurs claimed that Greece's education system has not been successful enough in properly preparing candidates to ensure a smooth transition into the job market. 

To tackle this challenge, you need an effective global acquisition strategy that will help you expand your potential candidate pool. 

4. Navigating through Greek payroll and tax

If the complicated employment laws were insufficient, Greece also has an intricate payroll system. Some of its basic policies include,

• Depending on the fund they belong to, employers and employees must contribute to the social security system. 
• For example, in the primary social security fund, EFKA, employers and employees contribute 22.29% and 13.87%, respectively. 

Understanding Greece's global payroll system and maintaining compliance often becomes challenging for employers.

How to Hire in Greece

Now, to the most important question: despite all these challenges, how do you successfully hire employees in Greece?

Well, there are three main options available for this purpose.

1. Setting up a local entity

• Setting up a local entity denotes establishing a formal business presence in Greece.
• It is a long, extensive process that involves significant ongoing costs related to HR, payroll, and legal compliance for maintaining the entity. 

2. Hire employees via EOR.

• An Employer of Record acts as a legal employer for all your international employees.
• An EOR assumes all legal responsibilities, from HR tasks to employee benefits and compliance issues, thereby reducing your administrative burden. 
• By partnering with an EOR like Skuad, companies can hire, pay, and manage their global workforce without setting up a local entity.

3. Hiring contractors through AOR

• Although not a legal employer, an AOR (Agent-of-record) can be quite advantageous, especially when you hire contractors in Greece.
• They serve as a point of contact for local government authorities, managing various tasks related to paperwork, permits, and compliance inquiries.

Cost of Hiring in Greece

Let’s look at a detailed analysis of the costs of hiring employees in Greece.

Additionally, there are a few other types of costs involved. They include,

• Direct costs: salary and wages, talent discovery, and onboarding
• Indirect costs: administrative costs, legal expenses, workplace safety and health.

Managing these costs without a proper system can be complicated and hectic. 

To help you with this, Skuad offers a country cost calculator for in-depth employer cost analysis.

A Brief about Employment Laws in Greece

When hiring in Greece, you must have a comprehensive knowledge of Greek labor law. These primarily include:

• Under Greek Labor Law, employment agreements can be legally ended at any time without a specific reason (Law 2112/1920, Law 3198/1955, and Law 4808/2021).
• As per Article 13 of Framework Directive 89/391/EEC, employers are legally bound to provide employees with a healthy and safe working environment. 
• Greek labor law ensures equal working opportunities by implementing legislation such as Law 4443/2016, which strengthens the framework for equal treatment and non-discrimination in employment.

Additionally, case laws, ministerial decisions, and presidential decrees establish guidelines for all employment-related issues. 

Both employers and employees must comply with these provisions to avoid potential legal pitfalls. 

Hire in Greece with Skuad

Attracting the right talent is one of the most important yet challenging tasks for every organization. 

You can have the perfect infrastructure and the right policies, but your business will struggle for growth if you fall behind in hiring quality people. 

This is where Skuad comes into play. It is a unified solution that enables you to build the perfect global distributed team seamlessly in 160+ countries. 

Power-packed with various features such as global mobility support, automated invoicing, and global payroll in 100+ currencies, Skuad is an all-in-one platform that solves all your international hiring challenges.

So, contact us today to experience the benefits of seamless global hiring with Skuad!

FAQs

Q1: What are the significant forms of employment in Greece?

Ans: Greece's individuals are hired as full-time employees or contractors. One of the significant differences between these two is that the formers are entitled to a set schedule and receive multiple benefits such as parental leaves, statutory sick pay, and more. Contractors, on the other hand, are hired on a project-to-project basis. 

Q2: What are the employment laws in Greece?

Ans: Under the employment laws in Greece, full-time employees are mandated to receive 20 to 31 days of annual paid leave, depending on their tenure of service. 

Q3: How long is a workday in Greece?

Ans: The standard working time for employees in Greece constitutes 40 hours per week.

Q4: What is the average salary in Greece in USD?

Ans: The average salary in Greece usually differs based on the industry you work in or the employees' experience. However, under labor laws, all employers must compensate their employees with a minimum wage of € 830 per month. This equates to USD 893.45.