Hiring employees in Austria
People are the most valuable asset of any business, so it’s crucial that you find the best employees when planning an expansion to a new place. So if your organization is planning an expansion to Austria and hiring there, you’ll need to know the country’s laws and customs to manage your Austria Recruitment efficiently and compliantly.
At Horizons, our expansion experts can support you through the recruitment process and provide outsourcing services to handle your hiring for you in Austria. With our help, you can source, recruit, and onboard employees in Austria and stay compliant with the country’s unique laws, even if you don’t have an established entity there.
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Austria hiring guide
Explore some of the key information about Austria recruitment and how to hire the best talent to help with your Austria expansion.
Where to recruit employees in Austria
Finding suitable employees for your expansion to Austria can take time, as competition is high for the best talent. Traditional methods such as job fairs and newspaper advertisements are still used to some extent, but, as with most countries, the internet now is the most popular place to find people.
Austria’s most widely-used job sites include Indeed, Karriere, Public Employment Service Austria, and several others.
Headhunting qualified and experienced workers from other companies can also be a successful strategy, and sites such as LinkedIn are useful when researching for this style of recruitment.
Discrimination and harassment laws in Austria
Austria is a well-developed, first-world country, and its employment regulations reflect the majority of other countries in this class. For example, as an employer, you cannot discriminate based on gender, sexual orientation, religion, race, or age. There are also strict laws prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace.
Training and onboarding staff in Austria
Various styles of onboarding and training are common for businesses in Austria, so it is mostly a case of determining which style works best for you, your industry, and your employees. For example, some businesses choose to have shadowing or on-the-job training whereas others may set aside a week or two for job-specific training for every role.
Compliance laws for employers in Austria
Austria has a unique set of compliance laws in relation to employment, so it’s important that you are well-versed with them before hiring in Austria. One key law to bear in mind is the requirement to establish a council of employees, or work council, for any business with greater than five employees. You will need to notify the work council in advance of terminations, and keep them informed about various other workplace developments.
There is also a risk of legal action from employees who believe they have been mistreated by their employer. The government provides support to these people and courts regularly side with the employees, so it is very important to remain compliant at all times and you may want to enlist help from compliance experts such as Horizons.
How to recruit the best staff in Austria
Potential employees are likely to consider a range of factors when choosing to work for you, so it is important to offer strong incentives if you want to attract the top talent. For example, benefits packages could include a strong pension allowance, extra sick days and vacation, and so on. You should also try to offer competitive compensation where possible. Austrians have high average incomes, particularly in Vienna, so you may need to be willing to offer relatively high salaries to attract the best employees.
