Looking to open Polish Office - Advice Needed

Hi guys,

It would be great if you can help to answer some of these questions :) Thanks in advance for any assistance on this!

A bit of background first - I have a British friend who is looking to open a small office in Poland employing around 4 staff initially.

- The area is Torun/Bydgoszcz.
- The industry is website development and design.
- The office will be primarily an English-speaking for business purposes (emails, phone etc.), so all staff will be required to have a strong grasp of English as a pre-requisite.

- Staff must be university qualified in IT/web marketing or equivalent experience

So, here's the questions...

Is this salary table from HAYS fairly accurate as a guideline?
hays.pl/prd_consump/groups/hays_common/@pl/@content/documents/digitalasset/hays_161417.pdf

- What kind of employee benefits are in Poland?
- What kind of employee benefits are awesome to have, and are likely to retain quality, hard-working candidates?
- Any advice on a realistic lower salary for the first 6 months probationary period, while the staff prove their worth.
- What are the taxes (National Insurance, Income Tax etc.) in Poland that an employer would have to pay, and what rates?
- Finally, and I know this isn't the nicest topic, how difficult is it to fire someone if they are just not cut out for the job, or if they cause trouble?

- Any other advice you can throw my way on this subject :)

probationary period in Poland is only 3 months - you can by-pass the thing by hiring the person for proabtionary period for a different position but it won't be seen favourably by the employee

the Hayes table seems pretty reasonable - I think if you want to attract good people you can't pay them less than 2000 even for the proabtion

Thanks, gumishu. That's exactly the kind of insight I needed.

Hi Caveman, Just to let you know that there is a scheme over there where a company can employ a university student for a period of time, and you get to pay significantly less social insurance etc. I am not 100% sure what way it works but i was working in an IT department for a major bank over here and they would get a lot of students in on this scheme. They did seem to know their stuff. Not sure if you would be interested in this, but thought I would mention it.

Regards
Vincent

Definitely interested in anything like this - it might be good to identify uni talent early. I'll have a look around on the net for the scheme.

Thank you

Any reason why this area?

If he wants to attract decent staff, they're not likely to be in that area - he'd be better off looking at Poznan or Wroclaw.

Yeah, he intends to hire a British expat from that area to manage the office. I realise it may not offer the top talent, but that's OK.