What is a secondment?
A secondment temporarily moves an employee into another role, another group entity or another country — while the employment contract with the home employer remains in force. The secondee keeps their seniority, pension and return ticket; the host organisation gets their skills and directs their daily work for the duration of the assignment.
That intact home contract is what separates a secondment from a transfer or a new local hire: nothing is terminated, nothing is re-signed locally. It is the instrument of choice when a company needs its own people somewhere else for a defined period — to transfer knowledge, launch a project or carry its culture into a new market.
Types of secondment
The word covers several distinct arrangements; the compliance workload differs sharply between them:
- Internal cross-border secondment: an employee is assigned to a subsidiary or branch of the same group in another country — the classic vehicle for market entry and knowledge transfer.
- Client secondment: professional-services firms embed a lawyer, engineer or consultant in a client’s team for a period, while the firm remains the employer.
- Posting of workers in the EU: an employer sends staff to provide services in another member state — the scenario the EU Posted Workers Directive was written for.
- Domestic secondment: a temporary move between departments or entities within one country — organisationally useful, legally the lightest variant.
The EU compliance layer
Cross-border secondments inside the EU sit on a well-defined but unforgiving rulebook. Three items belong on every checklist: the A1 certificate, which proves the secondee stays in the home country’s social security system (possible for up to 24 months under EU coordination rules); the Posted Workers Directive, which entitles the secondee to the host country’s core terms — minimum pay, working time — and usually requires a prior notification to the host authorities; and the 183-day rule from double-tax treaties, past which income tax liability typically shifts to the host country.
None of these is a formality. A missing A1 can trigger double social contributions and fines during an inspection; a missed posting notification is penalised in most member states; and a secondee who quietly crosses 183 days — or whose activity creates a permanent establishment — becomes a tax problem. The rules are manageable, but they must be checked per country and per assignment, before day one.
Secondment vs. local hire vs. EOR in a new market
For staffing a new European market, the three instruments answer different questions. A secondment moves trusted product knowledge and company culture into the market — but it is temporary, expat packages are expensive, and the secondee usually lacks the local language and network. A local hire is permanent and native to the market but starts cold on your product. An Employer of Record is not a third type of person; it is an employment vehicle that lets you make that local hire without a local entity.
In practice, the strongest setups combine them: a seconded manager carries the product and the headquarters’ trust, while locally recruited salespeople bring the market. We saw the local half of that equation in our own work — a country manager search that opened the Polish market from zero in seven weeks — and we recruit those local counterparts in markets like Poland, Sweden and Norway while the seconded lead handles knowledge transfer.
