What You Need to Hire Someone in the Philippines: Employer Prerequisites and the Document Checklist

What you need to hire in the Philippines: split the list into employer side and employee side

On this page: Four families of employee documents ｜ Legally required vs risk control ｜ Minimum contract content ｜ When the list changes ｜ A printable intake sheet

Straight answer: the threshold is not on the employee side, it is on yours. Four things must exist on the employer side before collecting a single employee document means anything. Almost every first-time employer here starts with "what papers does the new hire bring," ends up with a thick folder, and still has an employee who does not exist in any government system — because those four employer-side items were never completed.

The four employer-side prerequisites:

1. Proof that a legal operating entity exists. Corporate and sole-proprietor forms are registered with different authorities and produce different certificates. The corporate route is covered in registering a company in the Philippines; the sole-proprietor route in registering a sole proprietorship. Without an entity there is nobody on the contract who can actually carry employer liability.
2. Tax-side registration, in two layers. The first layer is the company's own tax registration, which exists from incorporation. The second is your standing as a withholding agent employing staff. Skip the second and your withholding obligation still arises the moment the first payslip goes out — you just have no channel through which to declare it.
3. An employer number with each of the three contribution agencies. SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG are three separate institutions with three separate numbers and three separate filing cycles. Completing one proves nothing about the other two. What each covers and who carries which share is in the guide to the three mandatory contributions.
4. The local operating permit chain. Barangay, city hall and fire are not "hiring registrations" as such, but they are the supporting documents other windows expect to see, and renewals ask about headcount. The full chain is in the three gates of a Philippine business permit.

Why the order is not negotiable: without an employer number the employee cannot be reported; without withholding standing the first payroll run creates a liability you cannot file against; and if the name or address on your entity certificate does not match the one on your permit, any window can send you back to start again.

The unflattering part: if you do not yet have a local entity but already need people, do not improvise with documents. An employer-of-record or outsourced arrangement is the cleaner route, at the cost of a different control and cost structure — see hiring compliantly without your own company. This article covers direct hiring only.

Hiring your first person triggers the whole employer-side set at once, and that set is either complete or it is not. Have us check your prerequisites →

The employee document list, grouped by who issues each item

Straight answer: group employee documents by issuer — items the person already holds, items issued by government agencies, items issued by the previous employer, and medical plus background checks. Grouping by issuer beats memorising a flat list, because the difficulty of replacing a missing item depends entirely on who has to produce it: the person can fix theirs today, an agency takes queueing, and a previous employer may simply never respond.

Family one: identity documents the person already holds. A government-issued photo identity document (check the spelling of the name and the date of birth against everything else), a formal copy of the birth record, proof of civil status where it affects tax declarations or beneficiary nominations, current address, emergency contact, and bank account details for payroll. Pay particular attention to name spelling. Middle names and compound surnames are written inconsistently across documents more often than anything else, and a single mismatch across the four government numbers means filings will not match back to the person.

Family two: government-issued numbers and certificates. A valid tax number; SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG numbers; a current professional licence or registration for regulated occupations; a valid driving licence of the correct category for driving roles, which you should verify rather than photocopy — see how to verify a Philippine driving licence. Most employers also ask for the standard criminal-record clearance; what it is and how to read it is in what an NBI clearance actually shows. First-time employees frequently hold none of these numbers yet, which makes the distinction between "they apply" and "you report them" a scheduling question — see what a new hire has to do in week one.

Family three: documents from the previous employer. A certificate of employment evidencing the fact and dates of service — how to request it, and what to do when it does not arrive, is in getting a certificate of employment. Also the prior employer's year-to-date compensation and withholding certificate, without which the employee's annual tax consolidation runs on incomplete data, plus confirmation that final pay was settled. This family blocks intake more often than any other, because the issuer is a third party you do not control.

Family four: medical and background. Pre-employment medical scope and who bears it is covered in arranging pre-employment medicals; what background checking may and may not cover is in background checks and their limits.

Intake discipline: sight the original, file a copy, and record the date received and who received it. This is not bureaucracy — in a complaint the burden of proof sits with the employer, and an undated photocopy proves close to nothing.

Legally required versus risk-control items, and where a missing one stops you

Straight answer: only three families are genuinely mandatory — the numbers that make the employee exist in government systems, the written basis for the engagement, and any licence the role legally requires. Everything else is risk control: not illegal to omit, but the exposure is yours. Many employers have this backwards, collecting reference checks meticulously while leaving the registrations until the year-end scramble.

Where each mandatory gap stops you:

• No valid tax number — withholding has no taxpayer to attach to and the annual compensation certificate cannot be issued. This surfaces in the first filing cycle, not at year end.
• A missing number at any of the three agencies — the employee simply does not exist in that system. The consequence is not "catch up later": arrears and surcharges arrive together, and failing to remit amounts already withheld from pay is a separate layer of liability.
• No licence where the role requires one — the hardest of the three, because it cannot be cured retroactively. Whatever happens while an unlicensed person is doing licensed work lands on the employer, and a licence obtained afterwards does not reach back over that period.
• No written contract, or no written probationary standards — the issue is not that the engagement is void, it is that the burden of proving what was agreed falls on you. The probation point is explained in the next section.

Risk-control items worth collecting anyway: verification records for qualifications and licences, reference interview notes, confirmation that the previous employer settled final pay, proof of address, signed receipts for company equipment, and an acknowledgement page for the handbook and company policies. The acknowledgement page earns its keep faster than anything else on the list — the first question in any disciplinary matter is whether the employee knew the rule, and one signed page answers it.

One commonly misunderstood item: restrictive covenants. Including one does not guarantee it will be enforced; enforceability turns on scope, duration and consideration in the individual case. Do not treat it as a lock. For questions about the validity of specific clauses or any labour dispute, consult a practising lawyer; this article is not legal advice.

How to prioritise: items that create a filing obligation come first (the numbers), items you cannot prove anything without come second (contract, acknowledgements, dated intake records), and items that only inform the hiring decision come third. The first group must be complete before the first payslip, the second before day one, and the third before the offer.

Not sure which items are mandatory for your roles and which can wait? Send us the role list and we will mark it up. Request a hiring document review →

The minimum a written employment contract has to settle

Straight answer: five things — the parties and the role, the pay structure and pay cycle, working time and place, term and probation, and termination and notice. Leave any one of the five blank and it becomes interpretive room that works against the employer when a dispute arrives.

One: parties and role. The employer is the registered entity's full legal name and registration number, not a trading name or brand. The employee is the full name as it appears on identity documents, including the middle name, spelled identically to all four government numbers. The role cannot be a job title alone; describe the actual scope, because where title and reality diverge the substance is what gets assessed.

Two: pay structure and cycle. No figures appear in this article, but the structure must be explicit: what is basic pay, what is an allowance, what is variable or performance-based, and what is a reimbursement rather than compensation. Get this wrong and everything downstream is wrong, because contribution bases, withholding bases and statutory loading items each recognise different components. How to sequence cut-off and payout is in setting up payroll compliance.

Three: working time and place. Normal hours, rest days, how overtime is authorised, and the place of work including how a change of location will be handled. Location is easy to skip and expensive to skip, because it drives both registration jurisdiction and the employee's commute — spell it out before any move across municipal lines.

Four: term and probation. Probationary employment may not exceed six months under Article 296 of the Labor Code of the Philippines (PD 442). Equally important: the standards for regularisation must be communicated in writing at the time of engagement. Without that written communication the employee is treated as regular, and security of tenure applies from there. Which engagement type to choose, and how the five types differ, is handed off to the engagement types overview and drafting a contract that holds up; clause drafting is not repeated here.

Five: termination and notice. Termination by retrenchment or closure requires one month's prior written notice to both the employee and the labour department under Article 298 of PD 442, and the substantive and procedural requirements for dismissal, including the two-notice rule, are set out in Department Order No. 147, series of 2015. Those two points tell you what mechanisms the contract must reserve; the operational risk list belongs to the employment risk checklist.

Signing and records: two counterparts, one for each party, initialled page by page, in a language both sides genuinely understand, dated no later than the actual first day. The most common and most damaging habit is letting someone start and signing at month-end — a late-signed contract is not void, but it turns "what was agreed on day one" into a question with no evidence behind it. For individual disputes consult a practising lawyer; this article is not legal advice.

When the standard list does not apply: licensed roles, minors, domestic workers, agency staff and foreign nationals

Straight answer: five situations break the standard intake list — licensed occupations, minors, domestic workers, agency or outsourced staff, and foreign nationals. The last one forks earliest of all: it is a different track before the offer is even drafted.

One: regulated occupations and licensed roles. The licence has to be valid before the person starts, not "within the first three months." Verify by checking the licence number against the relevant authority's public verification channel rather than accepting a photocopy. Track expiry dates as well — put the renewal date in the HR register, because from the day a licence lapses you are running an unlicensed operation. How to front-load this during recruitment is in the recruitment process in the Philippines.

Two: minors. A separate regime of age limits, working-hour restrictions and prior permissions applies, and the adult process cannot be adapted to fit. The decision line is simple: if the applicant is below the legal working age, stop and verify the current rules. Specific ages and hour limits are whatever the labour department publishes at the time, and none are printed here.

Three: domestic workers. Household employment has its own statutory framework, with different intake, registration and entitlement rules that cannot be borrowed from a corporate template — see what household employers need to know.

Four: agency and outsourced staff. The real question is not which documents to collect but who the employer is. If you direct the work, appraise performance and effectively determine pay, placing the person on a third party's books does not automatically move employer liability off yours. The compliant patterns and the risks are in using manpower agencies and dispatch arrangements. Before letting anyone run registrations for you, verify them properly — see how to verify a hiring agency yourself.

Five: foreign nationals. Requirements fork at the permit stage, before recruitment even closes, and local hires have no equivalent layer. That is as far as this article goes, deliberately — which positions may be held by foreign nationals is in position limits for foreign employees, and what the contract must additionally cover is in employment contracts for foreign nationals.

A sixth, frequently overlooked case: staff based in another city. Where someone works drives registration jurisdiction and the permit chain — see which office handles each of the five registrations. Local hiring conditions city by city are covered in hiring in Cebu, hiring in Clark and hiring in Davao.

If your hire falls into any of these, the standard checklist no longer applies. Send us the role and get a case-specific list →

A printable intake sheet, and the right order for chasing missing items

Straight answer: build the sheet with four columns — item, issuer, original or copy, and date received with the receiver's initials. The last column is the one people drop, and it is the only thing that will later prove when a document actually arrived.

Employer side (done once, before the first hire, then maintained):

• Entity registration certificate, original filed and a copy kept for counter visits
• Tax registration and confirmation of withholding-agent standing
• Employer registration acknowledgements from SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG — three separate items
• Current local operating permit chain for the year
• Authorisation document for whoever signs on the company's behalf, if the owner is not usually in-country

Employee side (run once per hire):

• Identity: photo identity document, birth record, civil status document where relevant, address and emergency contact, bank details
• The four government numbers: tax, SSS, PhilHealth, Pag-IBIG — mark "pending" with a target date for first-time employees
• Role credentials: professional licence, registration, driving licence, for licensed roles only
• Previous employer: certificate of employment, year-to-date compensation and withholding certificate, final pay confirmation
• Medical and background: medical result, verification record, reference notes
• Signed on entry: employment contract, written probationary standards, handbook and policy acknowledgement, equipment receipt

Chase missing items in three tiers:

1. Cannot start without them: the statutory licence for the role, the signed contract with written probationary standards, and the medical result. If any of the three is missing, move the start date rather than letting the person begin.
2. Run in parallel: the four government numbers for first-time employees. Start the applications on day one, log a target completion date, and have HR chase weekly. Discovering the gap on payroll day is the expensive version.
3. May follow, with a hard deadline: anything the previous employer must issue. Non-response is normal, so send one written follow-up, keep the record of it, and file what you can with the information you already have rather than stalling the whole return over one piece of paper.

Two closing points. First, an intake sheet answers "do we have it," not "is it correct" — one inconsistent spelling across the four numbers defeats a fully ticked list. Second, this article deliberately leaves out sequence and locations: the full process is in the five-stage hiring process, where each registration is filed is in the five registration windows, what a person really costs is in how Philippine labour cost is built up, and the traps around a first hire are in eight things to settle before hiring your first employee.

YIXING is a private consultancy — SEC-registered (CS202009551), accredited by the Bureau of Immigration (BI Accreditation No. CA-202624381-1, valid to 30 June 2027), and accredited by DOLE and PRA — with no government affiliation; current requirements and outcomes remain those published and decided by the authorities. The full service line is YIXING visa and HR services. For labour disputes, consult a practising lawyer; this article is not legal advice.

Before this sheet goes to your HR team, have someone who knows the local windows check it — it removes most of the rework. Book a hiring compliance check →