Hiring Process in the Philippines: Every Step an Employer Must Complete, From Offer Letter to Full Statutory Registration

The employer-side hiring process in the Philippines: five links from offer to full registration

Short answer: the employer's process has five links — pre-offer eligibility verification, a written contract with the engagement correctly classified, four employer registration tracks, payroll and withholding records, and statutory records plus the labour standards you must post. The employee side is just "submit documents, sign, show up". Everything that gets inspected, and everything you can be held liable for, sits on the employer side.

The links are ordered, and the order is load-bearing. Get the classification wrong and the contract does not do what you think it does. Leave the contract undone and you cannot fill in the registrations accurately. Skip the registrations and the moment you release the first payslip you are already behind on withholding and employer shares.

The order matters more than the checklist. The typical failure is not a missing item but an inverted sequence: the person starts work, the contract is backdated at month end, the social contributions wait until probation ends, and wages are paid in cash in the meantime. Each looks minor on its own; together they make a complete case against you.

This article covers only the employer-side chain. Sourcing channels, interviewing and offer mechanics are covered separately in the full recruitment process in the Philippines. What a hire actually costs, including statutory loading, is in how Philippine labour cost is computed. If you need people before you have a local entity, see hiring compliantly without a company: EOR and staff leasing. If you are staffing a new store, the money side of opening is in the cost structure of opening a shop.

Your first employee triggers the whole employer registration set at once, and that set has only "done" and "not done". Have us map the registration chain for your roles →

What has to happen before the offer goes out

Short answer: finish four things before the offer letter leaves your hands — identity and age verification, the licences the role legally requires, background and reference checks, and the pre-employment medical. Only one of those has no flexibility at all: the licence. Sequence matters because once an offer is issued and accepted, withdrawing it carries cost, and once an unqualified person starts work, removing them costs an order of magnitude more.

Identity and age. Verify government identification and date of birth and confirm the legal working age. Employment of minors sits under a separate and stricter regime with its own prerequisites; do not run it through the adult process. Keep copies in the employee file — "we looked at it" is not verification.

Licences the role legally requires. Foreign-invested employers miss this most often, because the equivalent role at home may not need one. A number of occupations in the Philippines are regulated and can only be practised by a currently licensed professional; driving roles need a valid licence of the correct restriction code; security, health care, accounting and engineering each answer to their own regulator. If the job description says one thing and an unlicensed person actually performs the work, the exposure lands on the employer. How to check a driver's licence is in verifying a Philippine driver's licence.

Background and references. There are boundaries on what you may look into. Employment history, credentials and licences, and confirmation of dates and status with previous employers are within a reasonable, job-related scope. Personal information unrelated to the role — and hiring criteria based on personal attributes unrelated to the role — create discrimination and privacy exposure. The method and the limits are in how to run background checks in the Philippines.

Pre-employment medical. Which examinations, who bears the cost, and how an adverse result is handled are part of the hiring decision, not an afterthought once someone has started. Arrangements are covered in scheduling the pre-employment medical.

Finish those four and your hiring decision can survive scrutiny. What the offer letter itself should and should not say belongs to the recruitment article and is not repeated here.

If the role requires a licence and you hire someone without one, the exposure is the employer's, not the employee's — and there is no way to fix it after the fact. Send us your role list and we will flag the licensed positions →

The contract: sign it before day one, and classify the engagement correctly

Short answer: the written contract must be signed before the person starts, and the most important clause is not the salary — it is how the engagement is classified, because that single choice governs dismissal protection, regularisation and end-of-term treatment.

Why it has to be before day one. Arrangements such as probationary employment share a common feature: they only stand up if the standards were communicated to the employee in writing at the start. Producing a contract two weeks in does not reliably cure that, and by then an employment relationship exists in fact. The same logic applies to the job description, work location, hours and pay structure. Once those are established verbally, rewriting them later on terms more favourable to the employer looks like a unilateral change.

Substance beats labels. Philippine practice looks at the reality of the relationship rather than the name on the document. Call someone a consultant, a contractor or a freelancer, but if you set their hours, direct and supervise their work, supply the tools, host them on your premises and have them perform work that is part of your core business, the relationship is very likely to be treated as employment. Getting the classification right is worth more than filling the contract with disclaimers. The rights attached to each engagement type, and the drafting patterns most often struck down, are covered in writing an employment contract that holds up; probationary limits, the duty to communicate standards and correct end-of-probation handling are in probationary period rules in the Philippines.

Two documents belong next to the contract. First, an employee handbook or written policy set, because discipline, attendance rules and performance standards can only be relied on if they have been properly promulgated — drafting and promulgation are in making an employee handbook legally effective. Second, a job description, which serves simultaneously as the hiring basis, the performance basis and the boundary for any later reassignment.

One caution for this section: classification, dismissal and reassignment are the three densest areas of Philippine labour litigation. For your specific case consult a licensed lawyer; this article is not legal advice. The situations employers lose most often are in ten high-frequency employment risks in the Philippines.

Employer registrations: the tax track and the three contribution agencies

Short answer: your first employee triggers four registration tracks at once — the tax side, SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG — and each track is two steps: register the company as an employer, then report each employee individually. Plenty of new companies complete only the first step and assume they are done, which leaves employees never actually reported.

• Tax side. Your company already has its own tax registration from incorporation, but acting as a withholding agent for employees is a further layer: each employee needs a valid taxpayer identification number, and one has to be obtained if they do not have it; the company files and remits tax withheld on compensation on the prescribed cycle; and annually it issues each employee a certificate of compensation paid and tax withheld — BIR Form 2316 is the one universally asked for in practice, to the point that immigration-related applications commonly list it as proof of income. Form versions, numbers and filing cycles follow whatever the agency currently publishes.
• SSS. Obtain an employer number first, then submit employment reports for each hire, then file and remit monthly, with the employer and employee each carrying their own share.
• PhilHealth. Same pattern — employer registration first, employee reporting second, monthly computation, shared between employer and employee.
• Pag-IBIG. Employer registration, employee reporting, monthly remittance. The amounts are smaller, but a gap still becomes a delinquency record.

The three contribution agencies are not one errand. Each has its own employer number, its own forms, its own deadlines and its own catch-up rules, and being registered with one says nothing about the other two. Contribution bases, employer and employee shares, deadlines and the layered consequences of late or missed remittance are already covered: see the employer's guide to registering, filing and remitting all three, and for what each agency actually covers, the three mandatory contribution schemes explained. This article does not repeat the computation; it fixes the position in the sequence: all four tracks must be complete before the first payslip, because releasing pay creates the withholding obligation immediately.

Two persistent myths. One, "probationary staff do not need to be registered" — engagement type does not change the applicability of contributions or withholding. Two, "we only have one or two people, it can wait" — employer obligations are not prorated by headcount, and catching up later brings arrears and surcharges together. The employee-side view of the same week is in the paperwork of your first week on a Philippine job.

Employer registration and employee reporting are two different acts. Do only the first and your staff do not exist in the system. Have us complete all four registration tracks for you →

Payroll, withholding and the records you must keep before the first payslip

Short answer: before you release any pay you need four things in place — a defined pay period and payday, verifiable timekeeping, a payslip format that itemises every deduction, and proof that pay was released and received. Without them, paying on time still leaves you unable to prove anything when a complaint is filed.

Pay period and payday. Write both into the contract or a written policy and keep them stable. Moving payday ad hoc, or splitting pay into a base plus unlabelled components, counts against you in a dispute. Premiums for overtime, night work, rest days and holidays should be set out in policy rather than calculated afresh each time.

Timekeeping. Whether you use a clock, biometrics, a system or paper sign-in, what matters is that the record is traceable and the employee can verify it. Attendance is both the basis for computing pay and the only defensible evidence in absence, tardiness and overtime disputes.

Payslip contents. A payslip should let the employee reconstruct the number: the covered period, basic pay, overtime and premiums, statutory deductions itemised separately (tax and each of the three contributions), any other deduction with its stated basis, and net pay. "Other deductions" is where employers get into trouble — which deductions have a legal basis and which are unlawful is set out in unlawful wage deductions in the Philippines.

Retention. A defining feature of Philippine labour disputes is that the burden of proof sits with the employer: if the employee says they were not paid, you have to show that they were. How long to keep payslips, acknowledgements, timekeeping, contracts and proof of policy promulgation, and in what form, is in retaining payroll and wage records.

Posting and promulgation. Labour standards information and certain mandated policies belong on display in the workplace, and a handbook or disciplinary rules only become enforceable once properly promulgated. When the labour department inspects, this layer is exactly what it looks at. Which benefits are mandatory and which are discretionary is in mandatory employee benefits in the Philippines; the broader framework is in Philippine labour law basics for employers.

Because the burden of proof is yours, records are not admin overhead — they are your only defence. Outsource payroll and contribution administration to us →

Hiring a foreign national: where the process forks and what the employer carries

Short answer: the process forks at the very first link. Before a foreign national can lawfully work, the employer has to complete a separate employment permit and work visa chain — and that chain is initiated by the employer, not by the employee. Everything after it — contract, contributions, records — still applies, with extra obligations layered on.

Fork one: can the role be held by a foreign national at all? Some occupations are reserved by law to Philippine nationals, and others require a Philippine professional licence. Clear this before you finalise the org chart: see roles that cannot be held by foreign nationals.

Fork two: the permit and the visa, in that order. The usual path is for the employer to apply to the labour department for the alien employment permit first, then use it to process the work visa, with both tied to this company and this position. The process includes publication and objection steps and a demonstration of why the role cannot be filled locally — routinely underestimated and routinely the bottleneck. The full chain is in the alien employment permit explained, the visa leg in the 9G work visa end to end, and the employer's complete obligation set in employing foreign nationals in the Philippines.

Fork three: any change to the tie must be processed. A change of position, a change in compensation structure, resignation, or a change in the company's name or registration status all affect the validity of a permit and visa already granted. Whether the employer must cancel on separation, and what happens if it does not, is in the employer's duty to cancel a work visa on separation.

What the employer additionally carries. First, document retention: permits, visas, identity documents and appointment papers for each foreign employee kept as a complete set and producible on demand — the checklist is in records to keep for each foreign employee. Second, understudy or local training obligations attached to certain roles. Third, liability for engaging anyone without valid work authorisation, which falls on the company and its responsible officers rather than on the individual.

The scheduling reality: this chain has to start far earlier than a local hire's. A local employee's registrations can run in parallel with onboarding; a foreign national cannot begin work until the permit and visa are in place. How long it takes depends on the case and on the agencies' current processing, so do not build a start date on any number of days someone quotes you.

Schedule a foreign hire backwards: start from the day you need them working and walk the permit and visa chain in reverse. Send us the role and target start date and we will build the reverse timeline →

For employment registrations, payroll and contribution administration, and permit and visa processing for foreign staff, see Yixing visa and HR services. Yixing is a locally registered Philippine company holding immigration and labour department accreditations. We provide execution and compliance advisory, we do not represent any government agency, and we make no promises about application outcomes.