Tonga EOR & PEO

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Hire in Tonga

Tonga is a small nation comprised of 175 islands in the South Pacific. Located roughly 1100 miles from the north coast of New Zealand, this small nation has had a large influence on the history of Polynesia. Though a protected state under the British Crown in the 1900s, Tonga has been an independent state for centuries. For the past two decades, the Tongan economy has grown steadily, almost tripling since 2000 to reach $550 million in 2023. This growth is expected to continue at 2.5% in 2024. The small population of just 107,773 people is stretched out over 45 inhabited islands, though the majority live on Tongatapu, the country’s main island. The working-age population is 64,900, and the country has low unemployment at 2.37% in 2023. This makes for a reasonably tight labor market. If you’re thinking of hiring Tongan workers to work for your company, you may very well need an EOR to help you recruit and hire them.

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hire employees in Tonga

What Is a Tonga EOR?

An EOR is an employer of record, a service provider that works with other companies to recruit and hire employees on their behalf. This term may also be used interchangeably with a PEO or professional employment organization. An EOR in Tonga can allow client companies to hire workers without having to own registered businesses in the country. It can also recruit these employees efficiently and take care of their long-term human resources (HR) needs. EORs normally look after contract management, payroll, employment taxes, benefits administration, leave scheduling, and other services as necessary. Their clients pay them a regular fee for each employee they manage, as well as paying salaries and contributions through them.

Save Money And Time with A Tonga EOR

What Are the Benefits of a Tonga EOR?

Hiring workers in Tonga without an EOR can be a real challenge. Partnering with an EOR, however, can produce numerous advantages, including:

Not needing an entity: If you wanted to hire Tongan workers on your own, you’d normally need to travel to Tonga and set up a legally registered business entity like an LLC or a corporation. This can take a lot of time and money. Instead, you can have an EOR hire your workers directly. The EOR becomes their legal employer while contracting them to work for you on a daily basis.
Language skills: The official languages of Tonga are the local Polynesian language, Tongan, and English. Tongans also speak dialects that can be understood in the nearby islands of Fiji, Wallis and Fortuna, and Samoa. These language skills make communication simple and give employers who wish to do business in the region a valuable advantage.
Fast recruitment and onboarding: Trying to hire on your own in Tonga can be a serious challenge. Without a firm understanding of the labor landscape in the country and the recruitment strategies that work, you’d find it hard to fill your open positions even in a matter of months. With an EOR, however, this completely changes. An EOR in Tonga will have its own labor pool to select candidates from and the experience to be able to reach out to new applicants effectively. This lets the EOR recruit staff in a matter of just days or a few weeks and attract higher-quality talent as well.
Affordability: Tonga is a middle-income country, and salaries are well below international averages. Employer contributions to social security are also below average, which helps to make Tongan employees very affordable.
Constant compliance: The EOR, as the sole legal employer of your Tongan employees, is responsible for ensuring compliance with all of Tonga’s labor and tax laws. It creates contracts in line with local statutes, monitors working conditions, and handles tax and salary payments. In these ways, the EOR ensures constant compliance with these laws, and that protects you from penalties or any legal actions by employees.

Horizons is Best IN Class

Why Choose Horizons?

Horizons stands out as a Tonga EOR through:

A strong regional presence in the Asia-Pacific region, meaning senior management are on the ground to deal with any issues.
Client-focused infrastructure. Horizons won’t oversell you on products and services you don’t need. Horizons offers the easiest platform to compliantly hire and pay people worldwide.
Cost-effective solutions. At $499 per employee, per month, no EOR in Tonga is more affordable. The cost is 100% transparent (onboarding, offboarding, deposit, no extra charges).
A customer-first culture. Horizons is an efficient bootstrapped company. It is not an externally-funded company burning investor cash to aggressively acquire new clients. Horizons is the only EOR that grows with its customer, reflecting the level of care and personal attention provided to each customer. Horizons will carefully advise on the best setup in each country: the type of contract needed, how to structure your benefits, and how to offboard a person while minimizing the risk of conflicts and extra cost
A long-term partnership. Horizons is the only EOR platform with a recruitment arm — a direct response to client demand. If any employee is leaving, or if our clients want to explore a new country, Horizons can recruit new candidates directly for the client. Horizons is:
- The only EOR doing this in-house — no subcontracting
- The only EOR doing this without a retainer — clients are only charged upon success
- The only EOR charging just a 2% fee per month.

Step-by-step Tonga EOR

How Does a Tonga EOR Work?

You can partner with a Tonga EOR to recruit and manage your workers for you. You’ll pay a fee for each employee, and the EOR will provide you with regular services that normally include:

Hiring your employees: The number of employees you need, the positions you have available, and the requirements for successful candidates are all important points you’ll need to share with the EOR. These staffing needs will form the basis of its recruitment strategy. It may be able to find most of the employees you need from its labor pool or local networks. For more specialized positions, however, it may need to advertise publicly to find appropriate applicants. The EOR will select the best candidates for you and propose them. If you accept them, the EOR will hire them for you. This will make the EOR their sole legal employer in Tonga.
Managing employment contracts and onboarding: Before contracting the employees, you will have a chance to negotiate terms with them. The EOR can recommend conditions and appropriate compensation that you should offer. Once these terms have been hammered out, the EOR will prepare legal contracts in line with labor regulations. It will enter into these contracts with the employees directly while stipulating that they will work directly for your company on a regular basis. Once they’re officially hired, the EOR will onboard these new employees. It will collect their personal and payment details and enter them into their employee databases. It will also register them with the local tax and social security authorities and prepare these employees to come aboard with your company.
Processing payroll and handling employment taxes: While you may be used to in-house payroll, working with an EOR lets you outsource this function. You’ll simply need to send funds and worked hours data to the EOR in every pay period, and it will do the rest. This includes calculating each employee’s gross salary, taxes to be withheld, and social contributions, including yours, from the employer’s side. The EOR will remit tax and social security payments, leaving net salaries that will be dispersed to the employees. It will also provide employees with detailed pay slips and record all payroll activities for your future reference.
Administering benefits: If your company chooses to offer employees additional benefits to enhance their compensation packages, the EOR can also administer these for you. It will sign employees up for programs like private insurance and pensions, calculate contributions, and make regular payments at every pay period.
Taking care of exit procedures: Whether you need to terminate individual employees or let go of groups for economic reasons, the EOR will legally have to perform these terminations. It will take your justification into account and, assess the notice periods and severance payments that may need to be made, and then provide these as appropriate.

stay compliant with Tonga labor laws

Labor Laws

Tonga’s relevant laws are laid down in the Tonga Constitution (revised in 2013), the Employment Relations Bill of 2020, the Price and Wage Control Act of 1988, the National Retirement Benefit Funds Act of 2016, and various other laws. Below is a summary of the most important points to help you know what to provide for your Tongan workers.

Employment contract types

Contracts in Tonga can be oral but must be written for periods of longer than two months. Contracts can be permanent or fixed-term.

Project-based

Fixed-term

Indefinite

Working hours in Tonga

Normal working hours in Tonga are from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with a one-hour lunch break included.

An employee’s total hours of work, including overtime, should not exceed 48 hours.

Overtime must be compensated in the following way:

Holiday Schedule in Tonga [2024]

Tonga has 12 paid public holidays each year. These are a mixture of national days and religious observances (Christian).

Tonga’s public holidays for 2024 include:

Date	Holiday name
1 Jan, 2024	New Year’s Day
29 Mar, 2024	Good Friday
1 Apr, 2024	Easter Monday
25 Apr, 2024	ANZAC Day
3 Jun, 2024	Emancipation Day of Tonga
4 Jul, 2024	King Tupou VI’s Birthday
17 Sep, 2024	Birthday of Crown Prince Tupouto’a’Ulukalala
15 Aug, 2024	Assumption Day
4 Nov, 2024	Tonga National Day
2 Dec, 2024	King Tupou I Day
25 Dec, 2024	Christmas Day
26 Dec, 2024	Family Day

Paid time off

A worker is entitled to a 30-minute unpaid break for every four hours of work and one 24-hour rest period every week.

Sick leave in Tonga

If an employee has worked for at least six months for an employer, they are entitled to 10 days of fully paid sick leave. Unused sick leave is automatically rolled over to the next year. The employer may request a medical certificate to certify the reason for the leave.

Less than 6 months of sick leave:

(percentage of regular wages owed to the employee)

Over 6 months of sick leave

In order for employees to receive the full wages due to them, workers must present a valid medical certificate from a certified doctor to their employer.

Maternity leave in Tonga

An expecting mother is entitled to 30 consecutive work days for maternity leave. This leave may be taken at any time so long as at least 15 days are taken following her confinement. No paternity leave is currently mandated in Tonga.

Annual leave in Tonga

After completing one year of service to an employer, an employee is entitled to one day of leave for every month of work performed or 12 days of leave per year. This leave can be taken in one period or divided as long as one period is at least one week long.

Termination & severance in Tonga

Except for cases of gross misconduct, employers or employees who terminate employment agreements must provide notice to the other party. This should be one week’s notice for a period of service under two years. After two years, two weeks’ notice must be given. If a worker is made redundant, they must be given redundancy pay of one week’s wages for each year of service they’ve provided.

Tonga's compulsory social security contributions

Social security contributions are primarily governed by the National Retirement Benefits Fund (NRBF). Contributions to the NRBF are intended to provide financial support to employees upon retirement, ensuring they have a source of income after leaving the workforce.

Employers are required to match the employee’s contribution by contributing an additional 5% of the employee’s gross salary to the NRBF.

Tonga social security for foreigners

All employees working in Tonga are generally covered by the NRBF, including both local and foreign workers.

Individual income tax

In Tonga, individual income tax rates are progressive, meaning that the tax rate increases as the taxable income increases. Taxable income includes wages, salaries, bonuses, and other earnings.

Health insurance

There is no comprehensive national health insurance system like those found in many other countries. However, the government does provide some public health services, and there are also private health insurance options available.

Private health insurance is available in Tonga and can be purchased through local or international insurance companies. Private health insurance plans may offer comprehensive coverage, including dental, optical, and specialist care, which may not be fully covered by public healthcare.

hassle-free Tongans compensation & benefits

Compensation & Benefits

Tonga compensation laws

Tonga currently has no mandated minimum wage. Skilled workers take in average salaries of about 1000-1500 TOP (Tongan Pa’anga)/month (roughly 425-640 USD).

In Tonga, overtime must be paid at a rate of at least 125% of normal wages. If an employee works on a public holiday, they must be paid 150% of normal wages or, with their agreement, receive another day off instead.

13 month salary in Tonga

A 13th-month annual bonus is not mandatory in Tonga. Some employers may, however, offer this bonus to enhance their compensation packages.

Social security for Tongans nationals

Employers in Tonga contribute 10% of a worker’s salary to the National Retirement Fund, which covers old age, disability, and survivors’ benefits. Employees are also deducted 5% of their salaries toward these same benefits, for a total of 15%.

Tonga Employer Of Record Peo

Navigation

Hire in Tonga

What Is a Tonga EOR?

What Are the Benefits of a Tonga EOR?

Why Choose Horizons?

How Does a Tonga EOR Work?

Labor Laws

Employment contract types

Working hours in Tonga

Compensation & Benefits

Frequently asked questions

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Frequently asked questions

How does an EOR in Tonga handle compliance with local labor laws?

Tonga EORs have staff who are fully versed in local employment and tax law. They know how to create solid contracts that are in line with these statutes, and they monitor employees’ working conditions to ensure they’re correct and appropriate. EORs also handle payroll and employee taxes so they can be sure that these amounts are properly calculated and paid in a timely manner.

What are the benefits of using an EOR for hiring in Tonga?

When you work with an EOR, you’re able to hire staff in Tonga without needing to register a business entity. This, in itself, is a huge benefit, but not the only one you’ll gain. You can also get employees on board with your company much faster than if you recruited them on your own and usually higher-quality hires as well. The EOR will also take care of all of the employees’ HR needs in Tonga and ensure their employment is strictly in line with all labor laws.

Tonga EOR & PEO

Start hiring in Tonga

Simple, compliant hiring with Horizons EOR & PEO

Hire in Tonga

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hire employees in Tonga

What Is a Tonga EOR?

Save Money And Time with A Tonga EOR

What Are the Benefits of a Tonga EOR?

Horizons is Best IN Class

Why Choose Horizons?

Step-by-step Tonga EOR

How Does a Tonga EOR Work?

stay compliant with Tonga labor laws

Labor Laws

Employment contract types

Project-based

Probationary period

Termination

Severance

Fixed-term

Probationary period

Termination notice period

Severance

Indefinite

Probationary period

Termination notice period

Severance

Working hours in Tonga

Overtime must be compensated in the following way:

For a regular workday:

For a rest day:

For a statutory holiday:

Paid time off

Under 1 year of employment

1-10 years of employment

10-20 years of employment

20+ years of employment

Sick leave in Tonga

Less than 6 months of sick leave:

Under 1 year of employment

1-10 years of employment

10-20 years of employment

20+ years of employment

Over 6 months of sick leave

Under 1 year of employment

1-3 years of employment

3+ years of employment

Maternity leave in Tonga

Annual leave in Tonga

Termination & severance in Tonga

Tonga's compulsory social security contributions

Tonga social security for foreigners

Individual income tax

Health insurance

hassle-free Tongans compensation & benefits

Compensation & Benefits

Tonga compensation laws

13 month salary in Tonga

Social security for Tongans nationals

Hire in Tonga in 24h without your own local entity.

Frequently asked questions

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