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Barbados

Barbados

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Employer of Record (EOR) in Barbados

What you'll learn

Barbados Introduction

Barbados is an island nation that has been inhabited since the 13th century by the indigenous Kalinago people. In recent years Barbados holds a place as a popular tourist haven due to its pristine beaches, architecture, and Caribbean cuisine that draws over 1 million visitors per year.

Employment Terms

The minimum wage in Barbados is currently between BDS$6.25 - BDS$8.50 per hour. The standard work week is 40 hours at 8 hours per day. Every employee is entitled to 22 rest days a week (typically on Saturday and Sunday). However, these rest days can be timed on any two days at the employer’s discretion. Workers taking overtime should receive 150% of their salary rate during those extra hours.

Types of Leave

Parental Leave

Pregnant employees who have been employed for at least 1 year are entitled to 12 weeks of paid maternity leave starting six weeks before delivery. If there are medical concerns after the birth, the employee may receive up to 6 more weeks for recovery (under the discretion of their doctor).

There’s no statutory paternity leave provided under Barbadian law. An employee may not receive maternity leave more than 3 times under with the same employer.

Sick Leave

Barbados has few regulations around sick leave, so you can set any rules in your employment contract. Labor laws in Barbados dictate that a doctor must certify sick leave after 2 days of absence. You can choose to pay an employee when they use a sick day, but it’s not required. The National Insurance Scheme (NIS) will cover sick pay after 3 days of absence (as long as the employee has contributed to the fund).

Paid Leave

There are 11 public holidays and employees are entitled to double pay if they’re required to work on a public holiday. After working at a company for five months, employees are entitled to 3 weeks of paid time off (although an employer can postpone this for up to six months). After working at a company for 5 years they receive 4 weeks of paid time off. Employers are also obligated to permit employees to have paid leave for jury duty.

Termination Process

Process

Employment contracts can be terminated as long as written notice is provided and a reasonable justification is provided. Otherwise, an employee who is deemed to have been unfairly terminated might have to be reinstated.

Notice Period

Employees should be informed of a termination somewhere from one week to ten weeks in advance, depending on their tenure — otherwise payment can be made in lieu of notice.

  • 5-10 years = 4 weeks notice
  • 10-15 years = 6 weeks notice
  • 15+ years = 10 weeks notice

Severance Pay

Poor conduct, failure to perform tasks, and redundancy are all valid reasons for termination. Severance packages are not required in these scenarios, but the NIS will provide a package for redundancy and layoff scenarios.

The Barbadian Severance Payments Act states that employees who are terminated for reasons other than misconduct are entitled to severance benefits, provided they have been employed for at least 2 years.

In such scenarios, the severance paid would depend on the tenure of the employee:

  • 1 - 10 years = 2.5 weeks pay per year
  • 11 - 20 years = 3 weeks pay per year
  • 21 - 33 years = 3.5 weeks pay per year

Additional Information

N/A

Overview

Language (s):
English and Bajan Creole
Currency
Barbadian Dollar (BBD)
Capital City:
Bridgetown
Population:
287,000
Cost of Living Rank:
4th
VAT (Valued Added Tax):
17.5%

Employer Taxes

12.75%

(estimated)

★  6.75% - National Insurance Fund

★  2% - Non-Contributory Fund

★  0.75% - Unemployment

★  0.75% - Employment Injury

★  0.5% - Severance fund

★  0.5% - Training Levy

★  1.5% - Health Service Contribution

Where you pay less, and get so much more.

Get global HR, compliance and payroll in 3 simple steps:
1

Find your remote talent

You've sourced a full-time employee or contractor located in a country where your company is not incorporated.
2

We’ll find the best price

Pass us the details of your candidate and we will let you know exactly what it costs to employ your candidate in that country.
3

Leave the onboarding & 
admin to us

Sit back and relax as we onboard your new team member and take care of all the local compliances and admin work.
How RemoFirst employs in Barbados
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It can be prohibitively expensive to establish an entity in every country you want to hire talent in, so RemoFirst will hire and pay your employee on your behalf while you manage their daily duties. RemoFirst will handle formal HR procedures and employment contracts that adhere to local laws, so that you can simply approve invoices via our platform. When you work with an Employer of Record (EOR) you can compliantly hire the best employees around the world.
How employees in Barbados get paid
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Your employee's hours, time off, holidays, bonuses, and commissions are automatically calculated into payroll. RemoFirst will invoice you in either US Dollars (USD), Euros (EUR), British Pounds (GBP), Canadian Dollars (CAD), Australian Dollars (AUD), or Singapore Dollars (SGD) around the 15th of each month to make sure your employees are paid on time. To make it even easier, you can summarize your entire global team's salaries to aggregate them into one payment (instead of many individual payments).
Full-time Employees vs Global Contractors
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Unlike full-time employees, contractors work on projects with multiple companies at a given time and are technically self-employed. Full-time employees are solely focused on their employer and usually receive benefits (such as health insurance, equity or stock options, and time off) as an additional form of compensation. While it can be cheaper to work with international contractors instead of paying benefits to a full-time employee, you run the risk of misclassification. It's recommended to work with an EOR for contractor onboarding and payments, so you can know that your international contractors are paid compliantly and on time.
Dependable support for employees
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Whenever the employee or employer has a question about, or anything else related to international employment, they can speak with our customer support team to get answers from our team of experts.