Countries covered Each of the 62 countries in the scope of application has its own country page, which summarizes the details of incorporation when hiring employees (for example, in all other countries, it is mandatory that the employment contract be drawn up in one of the national languages). The interactive graphs below show, in their horizontal bars, the estimated cost in the different countries for each of the three cases, classified from highest to lowest. In most countries, the length of the notice period is related to the number of years of service. In many countries, the total cost of the employer will depend on a number of variables or will even be subject to a court decision.
The description of employment protection in all countries classified with respect to each detailed element is presented in Annex A of the note describing the new OECD employment protection legislation indicators for temporary contracts. In a minority of countries, the employee is required to work during the notice period or that the employer obtains the employee's explicit consent to replace him with a substitute indemnity or garden leave agreement. These countries have a long tradition of working, as well as laws and enforcement to support their principles. However, in most of these countries, they do not fully enjoy the same protection as regular employees, as they fall outside the scope of some specific regulations (for example, executives are often excluded from working time regulations).
In addition, several countries have introduced the option of signing employment documents electronically, when this was not yet possible before the pandemic. In approximately 30% of countries, executives can work under an employment contract or on their own account. In the rest of the countries, only severance pay is paid, or only a notice period must be observed. In most of these countries, the notice period can be replaced by a one-time compensatory indemnity instead of notification (which is generally equal to the remuneration the employee would have received during the notice period), or a type of gardening leave (which generally implies that the employee is not destined to work), but will remain in service and receive regular salary payments until the notice period expires).
In some countries, measures have been introduced with a view to restoring employment, for example, a reduction in social security contributions when hiring new staff. In just over 50% of countries, there are no language requirements when it comes to drafting an employment contract, provided that the parties to the agreement understand its content. However, there are also some countries where courts have no authority to reinstate employees and can only resort to awarding (additional) compensation to the employee, compensating for damages resulting from dismissal. The situation differs for dismissal without objective reasons, since in most countries it means severance pay or other statutory compensation (e.g.
