Hiring staff for a Dutch hair salon: your first employee

Do the sums before you draft a contract

There comes a point where you cannot close the diary any more. You are turning down Saturdays, your colour clients are slipping two weeks out, and somebody says: just take someone on.

That is an investment decision, not a staffing question. An employee is not a cost you settle at the end of the month out of whatever is left. It is a fixed liability that runs twelve months a year, including January, including weeks when someone is off sick, including weeks when the diary disappoints.

So the arithmetic comes before the contract here. Once you know what an hour worked genuinely costs you, you know what that chair has to earn per week. Only then do you know whether the answer is yes.

This guide covers the employer side in the Netherlands: what it costs and which steps come in which order. What a hairdresser earns and how the pay scales are built up sits in the separate guide on hairdresser salaries in 2026, and is not repeated here.

What an employee really costs per hour

Employer cost mark-ups of anywhere between 20 and 40 percent circulate freely. Every one of those figures is true somewhere and none of them applies to your salon, because the contributions vary by contract type, by company size and by sector. Build the number from its parts instead.

Take a gross wage of 16.00 EUR an hour. That sits above the statutory minimum hourly wage, which stands at 14.71 EUR from 1 January 2026 and 14.99 EUR from 1 July 2026 for workers of 21 and over, per rijksoverheid.nl.

Holiday pay goes on first. The hairdressing CAO works with 8 percent, so 1.28 EUR. That makes the wage base 17.28 EUR an hour, and that base is what the contributions are calculated on.

Then the contributions themselves, all percentages of that 17.28 EUR. For 2026: the low Awf rate is 2.74 percent and the high rate 7.74 percent, the low Aof rate is 6.27 percent and the high rate 7.63 percent, and on top of Aof comes the Wko surcharge of 0.50 percent. Source: Belastingdienst, rates and percentages for payroll taxes from 1 January 2026.

As a main rule the low Awf rate applies to a written permanent employment contract that is not an on-call contract, set out in article 27(1) of the Wet financiering sociale verzekeringen. On a fixed-term contract you pay 7.74 percent, 5 percentage points more. That is not a detail: on a full-time salary it is well over a thousand euros a year.

There are two exceptions that come up often in a salon, and they sit in article 27(3). The low rate also applies to a BBL apprentice holding a written practical training agreement within the meaning of article 7.2.8 of the Wet educatie en beroepsonderwijs, provided it is in your records. And it applies to an employee under 21, as long as their paid hours stay at or below 48 hours per four-week return period or 52 hours per month. So you do not automatically pay the high rate the moment a contract is temporary.

The low Aof rate is for small employers. Small in 2026 means a 2024 contribution-liable payroll of at most 25 times the average contribution wage of 43,300 EUR, so up to 1,082,500 EUR. Every salon falls under that.

Then the Werkhervattingskas. The average rate rises in 2026 to 0.96 percent for WGA and 0.56 percent for the Ziektewet, 1.52 percent together, per uwv.nl. As a small employer you pay the sector rate, which appears on your assessment from the Tax Administration. Use your own percentage as soon as that letter arrives.

Finally the employer Zvw health levy of 6.10 percent in 2026, down from 6.51 percent in 2025, and the employer share of the pension contribution at 6.95 percent.

Two caveats on this build-up, and neither of them works in your favour.

The pension component is calculated here on the full wage, and that is exactly how it works. Pensioenfonds Kappersbedrijf has no franchise deduction: the contribution runs on the whole pensionable salary, capped only at 79,409 EUR a year. So do not budget for a lower base. From 1 January 2028 the fund moves to a new scheme that does carry a franchise and a different rate; until then nothing changes. Source: pensioenkappers.nl, checked September 2026.

On top of that sits a line missing here: the O&O contribution to the Sociaal Fonds Kappers. In 2026 it is 0.6 percent of payroll, unchanged from 2025, of which you may deduct at most 0.3 percent from the employee's wage. It also runs on the wages of staff under 21 and on those of a BBL apprentice. Source: sociaalfondskappers.nl, checked September 2026.

How much revenue that chair has to produce

Now translate it into your diary, because 21.44 EUR an hour on its own tells you nothing.

The hairdressing CAO works with a full-time week of 38 hours. Over a full year that is 1,976 paid hours, so at 21.44 EUR an hour a full-time employee costs you 42,365 EUR a year in employer costs.

Those 1,976 hours are not all hours behind the chair. Take off 25 holiday days, which is 5 weeks, plus roughly 1 week of public holidays and short absence. That leaves 46 working weeks, or 1,748 hours present.

Present is not the same as billable. Work with an occupancy rate of 75 percent, which is on the optimistic side for someone still building a client base. That leaves 1,311 billable hours a year.

Divide the annual cost by those hours: 42,365 divided by 1,311 is 32.32 EUR per billable hour. That is what the chair has to earn before you have made a cent, and before a gram of colour has been paid for.

Per week that is roughly 25 billable hours and 815 EUR of wage cost. If that employee averages 55 EUR of revenue per billable hour, that is 1,386 EUR a week and 72,100 EUR a year. Take off 42,365 EUR of wage costs, and out of the rest you pay for stock, extra rent, extra energy and your own risk.

Fill in your own figures. What matters most is this question: how many weeks could you carry 815 EUR a week of wage cost if the diary disappoints? If the answer is less than three months, a fixed-term contract with fewer hours is the wiser first step, even though you pay the high Awf rate on it.

Step 1: register as an employer with the Tax Administration

This is the step most often taken too late, and the only one with a hard date.

You register as an employer no later than the day your first employee starts work. You do it with the form Melding Loonheffingen Aanmelding werkgever for domestic businesses. Your payroll tax number and your filing letter usually follow within 1 week, longer if your details are incomplete. Source: belastingdienst.nl, checked September 2026.

You need that number to file payroll tax returns, and those returns run from the first pay period. Wait until after the first salary payment and you are already behind.

Sort out who runs your payroll in the same week. A payroll bureau or a package costs a few tens of euros a month per employee and prevents contribution-rate mistakes you would otherwise have to correct retroactively.

Step 2: identification, contract and probation

Before anyone starts, you establish their identity from a valid original identity document and keep a clearly legible copy in your records. That is an obligation the Labour Authority asks about directly during an inspection, per belastingdienst.nl.

A driving licence does not count as a valid identity document for this check, because it does not show nationality.

Then the contract. Include at minimum: the role, the start date, the contract type and duration, the number of hours, the gross wage, the holiday entitlement and the probation period. Refer to the hairdressing CAO, since it applies anyway.

The probation clause is the one that most often turns out to be invalid. The rules are in article 7:652 of the Dutch Civil Code.

The practical consequence: a contract of exactly 6 months, widely used in this trade to keep things low-key, carries no probation period at all. If you want that month of room, make it 7 months. Source: rijksoverheid.nl and wetten.overheid.nl, checked September 2026.

Think now about what happens when that employee starts on their own in two years. What you can and cannot agree on that sits in the guide on an employee who leaves and takes your clients. The moment to arrange it is at signing, not at resignation.

Step 3: the hairdressing CAO applies without membership

This is the point most often answered wrongly on business forums: do I have to follow the CAO if I am not a member of a trade body?

Yes. The CAO for the hairdressing industry running from 1 July 2025 through 31 December 2026 was declared universally binding by decision of 19 November 2025, published in Staatscourant 2025 number 36597 on 24 November 2025. From 25 November 2025 its provisions apply to every employer and employee in the sector. Membership makes no difference.

In practice that means the pay table, the 38-hour week, the holiday pay and the rules on allowances are not choices. They are the floor you may sit above and not below.

Watch the end date. The CAO runs through 31 December 2026, so a fresh round of negotiations with new figures is only months away. Put a note in your diary to lay the new pay table next to your payslips in January.

This chapter applies to a hair salon or barbershop within the scope of the hairdressing CAO. Run a nail studio, a beauty salon or a massage practice instead, and this CAO does not apply to you, not even by analogy: the pay table, the 38-hour week and the 8 percent holiday pay above are not your floor. Check whether a universally binding CAO applies to your own trade. If not, the statutory minimum wage is your only legal floor, not a CAO pay scale sitting on top of it. That changes the arithmetic in the chapter above: rework the contributions with your own gross wage instead of the 16.00 EUR in this example, and set aside the Pensioenfonds Kappersbedrijf rule in Step 4 below, because it applies only inside this sector.

Step 4: pension and the sector fund

The moment you employ staff you fall compulsorily under the Pensioenfonds Kappersbedrijf. For a solo self-employed hairdresser that obligation does not apply automatically, and that misconception keeps circulating.

The total contribution in 2026 is 13.90 percent, split as 6.95 percent employer share and 6.95 percent employee share, with a maximum pensionable salary of 79,409 EUR. The accrual rate is 0.87 percent. Source: pensioenkappers.nl, checked September 2026.

Register within the deadline the fund sets. Registering late produces an assessment covering the whole period your staff were already employed, and you settle that in one go.

Arrange your health and safety obligations in the same movement, because they start at exactly the same moment as your pension obligation. What comes into play is set out in the guide on health and safety rules for a Dutch salon.

What to do over the next month

Week 1: calculate. Put your own hourly wage and your own occupancy rate into the build-up above, and work out how much revenue that chair needs per week. Only then decide on contract type and hours.

Week 2: handle the paperwork. Register as an employer, choose a payroll provider, and draft the contract with a valid probation period and a reference to the CAO.

Week 3: register with the Pensioenfonds Kappersbedrijf and the Sociaal Fonds Kappers, and put your RI&E and your basic contract with an occupational health service on the list.

Week 4: set up your diary before anyone stands behind the chair. Two people in one salon without a separate calendar per staff member produces double bookings inside a week.

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