Hiring & Recruiting Employees in Canada
Canadian Talent Solutions for Global Businesses
Canadian Payroll Services empowers global businesses to hire and recruit employees in Canada. We identify talent market opportunities, build authentic relationships with our talent pipeline, and find and screen the best candidates for your hard to fill roles.
If you’re new to the benefits of hiring employees in Canada, we can help. We believe in the importance of deep industry expertise and our Canada-based recruiters bring decades of hiring experience to their practice areas. Understanding candidate and client needs is at the core of our consultative and collaborative approach to recruiting.
This is how we ensure success for your business and new remote employees.
Hiring Your First International Employee in Canada
We work with companies across many sectors to help them hire their first employee in Canada. The benefits are significant for many companies, and are well suited to businesses looking to hire remote roles in IT, DevOps, Engineering and Sales & Marketing.
Servicing Your Customers Across North America
We help businesses all over the world hire their first employees in Canada, opening up your business’ capability to serve customers in North America.
Small Business and Startups – the Benefits of Hiring an Employee in Canada
If you are a small business or a startup that’s looking at how you can maximise your investment and output with a new employee, then hiring talent in Canada could be beneficial to your business. Whether you are a tech start up looking to hire a data scientist, or a small business looking to hire sales resource to cover North America, a Canadian employee could be the solution. By hiring in Canada, you could benefit from having a member of the team that works in a different time zone to yours, meaning your business’ productivity increases and you get business gains faster.
Other benefits include:
- Salaries in Canada are, on average, lower than they are in the US or the UK. Canada’s workforce is highly educated, but is lacking when it comes to the opportunities that bigger employment markets offer
- Canada is an extremely large country, with six time zones contained within the nation. As a result, Canadian workers are often acclimatized to remote working and will be comfortable with working off hours than workers in other employment markets
- The size of the country also breeds great diversity, so Canadian workers tend to be highly adaptable. That being said, there are many cultural similarities between Canadian workers and US or UK workers, so remote employees in Canada will be able to assimilate into work cultures with ease
Our Practice Areas
Ensure Compliance with Employment Law When Hiring an Employee in Canada
Canada has a number of different employment laws, affecting employees and employers at both a federal and provincial level. The multiple levels of Canadian employment law can be complicated for global businesses hiring employees in Canada. Ensuring compliance with local and federal Canadian employment law is crucial, and a PEO company can help your business do this.
Each Canadian province has its own branch of social services and will have different minimum wages, notice periods and weekly work hour limits, for example. The vast majority of Canadian employees will be protected by provincial employment laws, while a handful of industries are regulated by federal employment law.
Canadian employees are entitled to paid annual vacation leave, as well as Canadian public holidays. Canadian public holidays also vary by province, so outsourcing through a PEO with native understanding of local employment law is important in ensuring compliance.
Canadian employment contracts typically include a probationary period, but employers are still required to provide reasonable notice of termination within this period.
Employment laws in Canada are also subject to change, so keeping up with the latest developments is key to ensuring compliance. Read our blog about the newest development in provincial Canadian employment law, Ontario’s right to disconnect bill, to find out more.
Do Remote Employees in Canada Need Work Visas?
If you are hiring employees in Canada who will be physically in Canada working remotely for the duration of employment, then they will not need work visas. If the worker needs to visit the country in which your business is based for activities related to their contract, then this will become more complicated. Consulting a PEO on when a visa is needed for your remote employee in Canada will ensure you are in compliance with visa restrictions. You can look at our blog on the challenges of having remote Canadian employees work temporarily in the US to see a practical example of the need for visas for remote workers.
Hiring a Remote Employee vs an Independent Contractor in Canada
Hiring an employee in Canada to act as an independent contractor is the most straightforward way to add them to your team. An independent contractor won’t receive a salary, but will rather invoice you for the work they complete, meaning they do not need to be added to the payroll.
Independent contractors work as individual, independent businesses, and are responsible for their own tax administration. This means that remuneration for Canadian contractors working remotely is not subject to withholding tax. In order to ensure compliance with employment law, it’s important that companies who hire independent contractors treat them as such, and don’t view contractors as an opportunity to cut corners when looking to hire a full-time employee. You can read more about the distinction in our blog on umbrella companies in Canada.
Hiring a remote employee in Canada who will work full-time is more complicated, as you will be legally required to have the employee on the payroll. When it comes to hiring a full-time, remote employee in Canada, there are a few different options: you could either set up a Canadian subsidiary that will act as the employer of that worker, or you could outsource to a PEO or EOR to take care of the hard work for you.
How Would I Open a Canadian Subsidiary?
If you are looking to hire large numbers of Canadian remote workers, and you have the resources to do so, you may wish to open a Canadian subsidiary of your organization to streamline your annual tax processes. The Canadian government would then view this subsidiary as a Canadian company for tax purposes, meaning you would pay both provincial and federal income tax. This is a very complicated process, and professional guidance will be needed to create a Canadian subsidiary.
Outsourcing to a PEO or Employer of Record
Outsourcing to a PEO or EOR means that you outsource the hiring process, including recruitment, employment contracts, payroll administration and taxes, to a third party. Canadian Payroll Services is a PEO that offers EOR services, so can handle the hiring and administration process on your behalf. While you will still be responsible for the experience and operations of your Canadian employee, a PEO or EOR would handle any employment issues that may occur.
Hire Your First Employee in Canada with Canadian Payroll Services
Because CPS is an employer of record, you can take advantage of our full suite of talent retention tools, including benefits, retirement savings match and more, without the burdens of creating a new Canadian entity.
We recruit, hire, onboard and payroll your candidates in Canada. You direct them.