Poland: End of January deadline for not setting up a Company Benefits Social Fund
Written By
Partner
Poland
As a partner and Head of our Employment team in Warsaw, I am an experienced employment law expert specialised in litigation, including civil and criminal cases involving corruption and trade secrets.
Employers with fewer than 50 employees must formally notify their employees by 31 January 2024 that they will not be setting up a Company Social Benefits Fund ("CSBF") and will not be paying holiday allowance.
The obligation to create a CSBF applies, as a rule, to employers with at least 50 full-time employees (“FTE”) as of 1 January 2024. This does not mean that employers with lower levels of employment are automatically released from such an obligation.
In order to avoid the obligation in 2024 to create a CSBF and pay holiday allowance, an employer that employs fewer than 50 FTE as of 1 January 2024, and is not covered by a Collective Bargain Agreement or Remuneration Regulations, must:
- take a formal decision in this respect (e.g. as a resolution or an announcement); and
- provide employees with information about this by 31 January 2024 in the customary manner.
This information only applies to 2024 and must be repeated in subsequent calendar years if necessary.
What if such information is not provided to employees?
Failing to provide such information may result in employers being obliged to create a CSBF or to pay the holiday allowance to employees who have taken 14 calendar days of uninterrupted holiday leave in 2024.
Failure to take one of the above actions results in the risk of:
- effective employee claims for the holiday allowance payment (with interest);
- fines, in some cases even up to PLN 30,000.
