HR Legal Compliance: Labour Law Checklist for Vietnam (2026)

HR legal compliance is the single biggest risk most foreign companies overlook when hiring in Vietnam — and it's also one of the easiest to get right if you know the rules. 

Our checklist covers every core area of labour law and employment law that matters when you're building an offshore team in Vietnam in 2026, from contract types and social insurance to the new digital contract rules that took effect this year. Each section is written for HR managers and business leaders who need the facts without the legalese. 

Note: This guide is a practical HR legal compliance checklist based on the key rules under Vietnam's Labour Code 2019 and the new Employment Law No. 74/2025/QH15, which came into effect on 1 January 2026. For legal advice specific to your situation, consult a Vietnam-licensed employment expert.

Why HR Legal Compliance Matters More Than Ever in Vietnam

Vietnam's Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) runs active compliance inspections, and penalties for violations have increased significantly since 2022. Beyond fines, non-compliance creates real operational risk: employees can take claims to the Labour Conciliation Council, and wrongful termination awards in Vietnam routinely include salary reinstatement plus back-pay.

For offshore teams specifically, there's an additional dimension: your Vietnamese employees are your company's reputation in the local market. If word spreads that a foreign employer cuts corners on insurance or pays below-compliant rates, talent acquisition becomes significantly harder.

The 3 Most Common Compliance Mistakes Foreign Companies Make

1. Using freelance contractor agreements to avoid social insurance contributions. It is the number-one audit trigger in Vietnam and carries retroactive penalties.
    
2. Issuing contracts in English only. Vietnamese law requires contracts to be in Vietnamese or bilingual. English-only contracts are legally unenforceable.
    
3. Setting probation salary at 100% of the contracted salary, then arguing it constitutes a separate contract. Under the revised 2026 rules, employers must clearly specify probation terms in writing and pay at least 85% of the agreed-upon position salary.

Vietnam's Labour Law Framework: What Governs Your Team

Two primary laws govern employment in Vietnam:

1. Labour Code 2019 (Code No. 45/2019/QH14) — the foundation covering contracts, working hours, wages, termination, and dispute resolution.
    
2. Employment Law No. 74/2025/QH15 — effective 1 January 2026, it replaces the 2013 Employment Law and reforms unemployment insurance, digital contracts, and worker classifications.

Sectoral regulations, MoLISA circulars, and regional decrees sit underneath these two laws. The minimum wage, for example, is set by a separate government decree renewed annually.

For offshore tech teams, the most practically important law change in 2026 is the mandatory digital contract requirement from 1 July 2026: all electronic employment contracts must be signed through an official government-certified system with digital authentication. 

In other words, paper-equivalent email PDFs will no longer be sufficient.

2026 Updates You Cannot Miss

1. Digital Employment Contracts (from 1 July 2026) — All electronic contracts must be executed through a government-certified digital signature system. If your EOR or HR platform uses simple PDF signatures, they need to upgrade before the July deadline. Non-compliant contracts can be challenged as invalid.
    
2. 7.2% Minimum Wage Increase — Effective 1 January 2026. All social insurance base calculations must be updated to reflect the new regional rates, even if your employees earn well above the minimum.
    
3. Tighter Documentation Standards — MoLISA inspections in 2025–2026 have focused on whether internal HR records match what has been filed with the Social Insurance Authority. Discrepancies between payroll runs and SI filings are now a primary audit trigger.

The Vietnam Labour Law Compliance Checklist (2026)

Every employee in Vietnam must have a written contract. Verbal agreements are invalid for any role lasting three months or more. There are three contract types:

Checklist:

Probation can be included within the main contract or as a separate clause. Key rules:

1. Maximum probation duration: 180 days for enterprise managers; 60 days for roles requiring a degree or professional certificate; 30 days for other technical/office roles; 6 working days for seasonal or simple manual work.
    
2. Salary during probation: Must be at least 85% of the agreed position salary.
    
3. Social insurance during probation: Under the revised 2026 Employment Law, employees on separate probation-only contracts are excluded from unemployment insurance; however, if probation is written into the main labour contract, social insurance contributions apply from day one.
    
4. Maximum one probation period per role per employee. You cannot extend probation beyond the legal maximum.

Checklist:

Vietnam operates a standard 48-hour, 6-day work week, though most tech employers operate on a 40-hour, 5-day schedule by agreement. The law sets caps and mandatory pay rates for overtime.

Practical note for offshore tech teams: Most Vietnam-based developers work 8 hours/day, Monday to Friday. If your deadlines regularly require weekend sprints, you are entering overtime territory and must pay accordingly or give compensatory days off. Unpaid crunch time is a compliance violation.

Checklist:

Vietnam uses a four-tier regional minimum wage system. The government increased rates by 7.2% effective 1 January 2026, the largest single increase in four years.

Checklist:

This is the area where offshore teams most commonly trip up on HR legal compliance — and where penalties hit hardest. Mandatory contributions apply to every employee on a labour contract of one month or longer.

Contributions are calculated on the employee's contractual salary, capped at 20× the regional minimum wage for unemployment insurance. For a developer earning 30 million VND/month in HCMC, your total employer contribution is approximately 6.3 million VND/month on top of their gross salary.

What changed in 2026: Employment Law No. 74/2025/QH15 revised the scope of unemployment insurance. Employees on separate probation-only contracts are now explicitly excluded from UI. However, employees on seasonal contracts shorter than 3 months but who have worked for the same employer for 12 consecutive months are now included in full social insurance.

Checklist:

2026 public holiday schedule: Vietnam has 11 official public holidays, including the Tet Lunar New Year (4–5 days), National Day (2 days), Hung Kings' Commemoration, Liberation Day, International Labour Day, and New Year's Day. For 2026, the Prime Minister approved 9 consecutive days off for Tet.

Checklist:

Vietnam's termination rules strongly favour the employee, and this is one of the most consequential areas of HR legal compliance for foreign employers. Wrongful termination is one of the most commonly litigated HR issues in the country.

Notice Periods

1. Indefinite-term contract: Employer must give at least 45 days' written notice.
2. Fixed-term contract (12–36 months): At least 30 days' written notice.
3. Seasonal contract (< 12 months): At least 3 working days' notice.

Severance Pay

Employees who have worked continuously for 12 months or more and whose contract is terminated (not resigned, not dismissed for cause) are entitled to:

1. 0.5 months' salary per year of service
2. Calculated on the average salary of the preceding 6 months
3. Redundancy pay (if terminated due to restructuring) is calculated the same way, but funded separately

Important: Employees dismissed for serious disciplinary reasons (theft, fraud, disclosing trade secrets) are not entitled to severance. But the dismissal must follow a formal disciplinary process — unilateral dismissal without due process is automatically wrongful termination regardless of cause.

Checklist:

If you are seconding staff from Singapore or hiring expatriates to lead your offshore team, there is a separate compliance layer:

1. Work permits are mandatory for all foreign nationals working in Vietnam, with limited exceptions for internal transfers within multinationals (requires prior approval).
    
2. Work permit requirements: The employee must be 18+, have relevant professional qualifications, at least 3 years' work experience, and be medically fit. The employer must demonstrate that no Vietnamese national can fill the role.
    
3. Work permit duration: Maximum 2 years, renewable once. After two consecutive permits, the employee may need to leave for at least 6 months before reapplying.
    
4. Social insurance for foreigners: Foreign employees on labour contracts are subject to the same contributions as Vietnamese nationals (employer 21%, employee 10.5%).
    
5. Fines for non-compliance: Employing a foreign national without a valid work permit carries fines of up to 150 million VND (≈ USD 6,000) per employee.

Checklist:

Your 3 Options for Building a Compliant Offshore Team in Vietnam

Once you understand the legal framework, the next practical question is how to structure your team.

Establishing a subsidiary or branch office in Vietnam gives you direct hiring control and complete compliance ownership. The trade-off is time (3–6 months to incorporate) and cost (ongoing corporate compliance, accounting, and audit requirements). Best suited for teams of 15+ where the overhead is justified.

An EOR becomes the legal employer of your Vietnamese team members while they work exclusively for you. The EOR handles all contracts, payroll, social insurance registration, and MoLISA filings. You manage the work; they own the compliance. This is the fastest path — typically 5–7 business days to hire — and the most common choice for teams of 1–20 people.

The key advantage for offshore tech teams: an EOR that specialises in Vietnam IT hiring (like Talent JDI) handles day-to-day HR legal compliance on your behalf, while also advising on market-rate compensation, tech stack-specific contract structures, and IP assignment clauses — not just the legal box-ticking.

If you already have a local entity or a trusted local partner, a specialist IT recruitment agency can source and screen candidates while you manage the employment contracts directly. This gives you more control over comp structures and equity grants, but requires your HR team to have in-country labour law expertise or access to a Vietnam employment lawyer.

Get HR Legal Compliance Right Before It Gets Costly

The biggest risk for offshore team builders is not the complexity of the rules: it's assuming the same HR legal compliance standards that work in Singapore or the UK will transfer to Vietnam without adaptation. They do not. Vietnamese employment law is its own system, and it favours employees by design.

Work with a local partner who knows the rules, keep your contracts bilingual, register your team for social insurance from day one, and you will have far fewer problems than the majority of foreign companies operating here.

Need Help Hiring in Vietnam with Full Compliance?

Talent JDI is Vietnam's specialist IT recruitment and Employer of Record partner — one of the few companies in Vietnam licensed by the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare to legally employ foreign companies' developers.

With 30,000+ pre-vetted developers in our network, an 8-year track record, and 300+ international clients, we give foreign businesses the complete path from salary benchmarks to deployed developer in 3 to 4 weeks.

✔ Contract drafting (bilingual)    ✔ Social insurance registration     ✔ Payroll processing     ✔ MoLISA compliance

Ready to build your team in Vietnam? Talk to Talent JDI