Guidance for companies considering employing staff in the Philippines without establishing a local entity, covering the legal basis, scope of service, cost structure and transition to your own entity.
What the arrangement is, and who is who in it.
A company that becomes the legal employer of your staff on your behalf. The employment contract, the payroll and the statutory filings sit with the EOR. The work itself, and every decision about it, stays with you.
No. That is the point of the arrangement. Your hires are employed through our existing Philippine entity, so you can have people working here lawfully without registering a company of your own.
We are, on paper. Starlight signs the employment contract, runs payroll and carries the statutory obligations. You keep full control of the work — what gets done, how, and to what standard.
A PEO shares employer duties with you and generally assumes you already have a registered local entity, so liability stays partly yours. An EOR is the employer outright, and needs no entity from you.
A staffing agency's service is finding candidates. An EOR's service is employing them compliantly. If you already know who you want to hire, the EOR alone is what you need — and if you do not, we run recruitment too.
Yes. One hire is among the most common reasons companies come to us, because incorporating for a single role rarely makes financial sense.
What gets filed, and who answers for it.
Yes. Your hire holds a genuine Philippine employment contract with our entity, receives the statutory benefits the law requires, and is covered by Philippine labour protections. What changes is whose name is on the contract, not whether the employment is real.
We enrol each employee with the SSS, PhilHealth, Pag-IBIG and the BIR, remit the employer and employee shares monthly, withhold income tax, and complete the year-end obligations including BIR Form 2316 and the alphalist.
Yes. Payslips itemise gross pay, statutory deductions and withholding tax in the form Philippine rules require, and employees have a named contact here for questions about them.
As the legal employer, we carry the exposure and handle the process, with our own counsel advising. You are involved in the decision because it concerns your team, but the procedural burden is ours — including representation in DOLE or NLRC proceedings where it comes to that.
Philippine law sets out both substantive grounds and procedural requirements, and shortcuts are where employers get caught. We advise on whether a ground holds, run the required process, and calculate any final pay correctly. Termination is the single area where we most often stop a client doing something costly.
Yes. Employment contracts include confidentiality undertakings and assignment of work product, so intellectual property created by your hire sits where you would expect it to. Tell us at briefing if your position needs anything beyond the standard terms.
Where our responsibility begins and ends.
Employment contracts and records, onboarding and offboarding administration, monthly payroll, statutory contributions and withholding, benefits enrolment, 13th month pay, year-end filings, and a named contact for both you and the employee throughout.
Yes. Health cover, allowances and any benefits you choose to offer beyond the statutory minimum can be set up and administered alongside payroll. The cost of the benefits themselves is yours; the administration is ours.
Commercial decisions and the work. You choose who to hire, agree their pay, direct their tasks, manage performance, fund payroll each cycle, and approve the employment terms we put in front of you.
Not as part of the EOR fee. Most clients have staff work remotely or supply equipment directly. If you need desks or hardware arranged locally, say so and we will price it separately rather than bundling it.
Yes — recruitment is a separate service you can take with the EOR or on its own. We source and vet, you choose, and we employ your choice.
How the money works, and what sits outside the fee.
A monthly service fee per employee, quoted once we know the roles, salary bands and headcount. We quote against your actual situation rather than publishing a single figure, because the work involved in one senior bilingual hire and ten support staff is not comparable.
The employee's salary, the employer-side statutory contributions, the 13th month pay accrual, and any HMO, allowances or equipment you choose to provide. These are your costs; we administer and remit them.
Employer contributions and 13th month pay typically add somewhere around 13% to 22% on top of salary, with the proportion falling as salary rises because SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG are all capped. Our cost calculator works this out for a salary and headcount you enter.
Tell us the roles and we will set out every line before anything is signed, including whether setup or offboarding attracts a charge in your case. We would rather lose a deal on a clear number than win one on a vague one.
How quickly it begins, and how it ends when it needs to.
Where you have already chosen the person and their documents are in order, onboarding is usually a matter of days rather than weeks — the service agreement, the employment contract, the statutory registrations and the first payroll cycle. Recruitment, if you need it, sits ahead of that and depends on the role.
A signed service agreement, the employee's details and documents, the agreed terms of employment, and payroll funding for the first cycle. We will tell you exactly what is outstanding rather than leaving you to guess.
Yes, and it is a common path. Clients often use the EOR while incorporating, then move staff across once SEC and BIR registration completes. We handle the transfer so continuity of employment and benefits is preserved.
You serve notice under the service agreement. If employees are leaving altogether we run a lawful offboarding, including final pay and the certificates they are entitled to. If they are moving to your entity, we manage the handover instead.
Yes. Transfers from an incumbent provider are straightforward in principle, though the detail depends on their notice terms and how their contracts are written. Send us what you have and we will tell you what the move involves.
Tell us the roles, the headcount and your timeline. We will come back with the costs, what Philippine law requires, and whether an EOR or your own entity is genuinely the better route.
Talk to our team