Insights

How to Choose an Employer of Record in Vietnam: A Due-Diligence Checklist

By Nguyễn Quốc Trung — Deputy General Director · Updated 2026-09-02

Choosing an Employer of Record in Vietnam is a due-diligence decision, not just a price comparison — because under Vietnamese law the client shares joint liability, facing administrative penalties plus back-payment of wages and insurance under Decree 283/2026/NĐ-CP (in force 10 September 2026, replacing Decree 12/2022/NĐ-CP) if the arrangement is mis-structured — so the checklist below turns the choice into seven questions to ask before you sign.

The checklist below turns that decision into seven concrete questions. Every point is framed as a question you should put to any provider you are evaluating. Where it helps, we state how Nhan Kiet answers, with facts you can verify independently — a licence number, a founding year, ISO certificates, a list of branches.

Why does the provider you choose become your own legal risk?

Vietnam has no dedicated legal framework for "Employer of Record" — the term is an international label, not a category in Vietnamese law, and no "EOR licence" exists. An EOR arrangement must therefore sit inside one of two recognised legal routes. If it is placed in the wrong one, the exposure is not the provider's alone.

The client bears joint liability for a disguised labour-leasing arrangement: both sides can face administrative penalties under Decree 283/2026/NĐ-CP (in force 10 September 2026, replacing Decree 12/2022/NĐ-CP), on top of back-payment of wages and insurance. Because the risk is shared, choosing the right structure at the outset protects your own director, HR lead and legal counsel — not only the supplier. That is why due diligence on the provider is due diligence on your own compliance.

Question 1 — Does the provider hold its own Vietnamese entity and labour-leasing licence?

Ask for the legal entity that will actually sign the employment contract, its tax code, and — if any part of the work is directed by you day to day — its labour-leasing licence number. A provider that cannot name its own entity and licence may be sub-contracting the employment relationship to a third party you never vetted.

Nhan Kiet answers with verifiable facts: the contracting entity is Nhan Kiet Manpower Supply Company Limited, tax code 0308022768, founded April 2009 (now in its 17th year), holding labour-leasing licence No. 15/2019/SHCM (first issued as No. 029/LĐTBXH in 2015). It is certified to ISO 9001:2015, ISO 45001 and ISO 14001. These are numbers you can check against public records rather than take on trust. Read more on the Employer of Record in Vietnam service page.

Question 2 — Which of the two legal frameworks will your contract sit in, and will they tell you before signing?

An EOR arrangement in Vietnam must sit in one of two frameworks, and the difference is which party directs the work day to day:

• Labour dispatch / leasing — Articles 52–57 of the Labour Code 2019 and Decree 145/2020/NĐ-CP. The client directs the work directly. It is limited to the 20 job categories in Appendix II, capped at a maximum of 12 months per worker (Article 53), and requires a labour-leasing licence.
• A service contract under the Commercial Law — the provider assigns, manages and supervises the staff and is responsible for the result. There is no job-list limit and no duration limit, but the client does not direct individual workers.

The right question is whether the provider will determine and tell you which route applies before you sign — not after a dispute. Nhan Kiet operates both routes and establishes which one fits your case up front, because, as Question 1 shows, the client carries joint liability if the structure is wrong.

Question 3 — Is the service fee itemised and capped? Any deposit, onboarding, offboarding or FX charges?

Ask for the fee in writing, broken out from payroll, and ask specifically about every possible add-on — deposits, onboarding fees, offboarding fees, entity-maintenance charges and foreign-exchange spreads — and whether each is included or billed separately. A single "all-in" number can hide these.

Nhan Kiet's service fee is 5% of gross salary per person per month, with a floor of VND 900,000 and a cap of VND 2,530,000 per person per month. Salary above the social-insurance ceiling of VND 50,600,000/month (from 01/07/2026, Decree 161/2026/NĐ-CP) attracts no further fee, so one person's fee never exceeds the cap however high the salary. There is no deposit, no onboarding fee, no offboarding fee, no entity-setup or maintenance fee, and no FX fee. Staff can start in 5–7 working days, against the 2–6 months it usually takes to set up your own entity. You can model total employer cost yourself with the free Vietnam salary calculator.

Question 4 — Will you receive a VAT invoice and a transparent breakdown of what was paid on your behalf?

Ask whether you get a proper VAT invoice for the service fee, and whether payroll, insurance and tax paid on your behalf come with a line-by-line statement. Without documentation, you cannot reconcile what left your account against what reached your staff and the authorities.

Each month, Nhan Kiet issues a VAT invoice for the service fee, while wages and statutory contributions paid on your behalf come with a disbursement statement showing gross salary, each insurance component, personal income tax and the fee separately. The payroll float you transfer ahead of each cycle is your employees' wage money, not a retained deposit — it flows straight to wages and statutory contributions. The statutory employer add-on is 21.5% insurance (BHXH 17%, occupational accident and disease insurance 0.5%, BHYT 3%, BHTN 1%) plus the 2% trade-union fee (Trade Union Law 2024, No. 50/2024/QH15), which is compulsory even where no grassroots union exists.

Question 5 — Who runs operations day to day, and where are they located?

Ask where the people administering your payroll actually sit, in which time zone, and in what language they support your workers. An EOR that is only a contracting shell — with operations outsourced elsewhere — struggles when a worker has a pay query or an insurance filing goes wrong.

Nhan Kiet runs operations in Vietnam with more than 200 operations staff and offices in Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong, Dong Nai, Binh Phuoc, Ha Nam, Bac Ninh, Da Nang, Quang Ngai, Hai Phong and Hanoi — ten locations across the country. It employs more than 40,000 workers across 34 provinces and cities for over 500 client companies, and supports workers in Vietnamese so your own HR team is not the first line for local questions. Monthly reporting is provided in English for headquarters. This is the manpower and operations backbone behind the EOR service.

Question 6 — What technology do the staff and the client actually get?

Ask what software the worker and the client each receive, and whether it costs extra. Attendance, payslips and approvals that live only in spreadsheets create reconciliation risk and slow disputes.

Nhan Kiet includes, at no extra charge: face-recognition and GPS attendance; the HRNK worker app (attendance, shift calendar, leave book, requests, electronic payslips, and social-insurance lookup); a client management portal for approving requests and timesheets and confirming payroll; online worker records; and daily wage advance for workers. New clients also receive bulk ID-card-to-tax-code reconciliation, bulk bank-account verification, and the first 50 electronic labour contracts free. Ask a shortlisted provider to demonstrate the worker app and the client portal live, rather than describing them — a working demo is the quickest way to separate a real platform from a slide deck.

Question 7 — Can you verify the provider's track record?

Ask for facts you can check, not adjectives. A founding year, a licence number, ISO certificates, a branch list and named reference clients can all be verified; "leading provider" cannot.

Nhan Kiet's verifiable record includes operation in its 17th year since April 2009, labour-leasing licence No. 15/2019/SHCM, and certification to ISO 9001:2015, ISO 45001 and ISO 14001. Companies including Samsung, LG, VinFast, Siemens, POSCO, Panasonic, LEGO, Pandora, Viettel, Vietnam Airlines, Vietcombank, Abbott, Masan, Vinamilk, Acecook, Mondelez, DHL, AEON, Shopee, Lazada and Tiki have engaged Nhan Kiet's services. Many foreign clients visit the head office to see the operations team, legal records and systems in person before handing over their Vietnam payroll — which is itself a reasonable due-diligence step to ask of any provider.

Questions foreign employers ask

Is an EOR arrangement in Vietnam legal?

Yes, when the contract is placed in one of the two recognised frameworks. Vietnam has no dedicated EOR law, so the arrangement must sit inside either labour dispatch/leasing (Articles 52–57 of the Labour Code 2019 and Decree 145/2020/NĐ-CP, which requires a labour-leasing licence) or a service contract under the Commercial Law. Placing it correctly is what keeps it lawful — and what avoids the joint-liability exposure under Decree 283/2026/NĐ-CP.

Does the client really share the legal risk?

Yes. For a disguised labour-leasing arrangement, liability falls on both parties: administrative penalties under Decree 283/2026/NĐ-CP (in force 10 September 2026, replacing Decree 12/2022/NĐ-CP), plus back-payment of wages and insurance. This is precisely why the structuring question in Question 2 matters before you sign, not after.

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To discuss which framework fits your roles and receive a written quote, contact Nguyen Quoc Trung, Deputy General Director, on +84 908 636 108 or [email protected] (office +84 28 3505 4224).

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