Madalena Caldeira clarifies the Portuguese legal framework for signing bonuses | Público

Madalena Caldeira, partner and head of Employment, analyses the context and regime of hiring bonuses, very common in Anglo-Saxon countries, in a Público article.

Companies have realised that when looking for the best workers, offering a ‘good’ salary is not enough. They need to offer other conditions – and this is where hiring or signing bonuses come in. In practice, the employer pays the worker a financial incentive just for agreeing to work for them, and is often linked to staying with the company for a certain period of time.

Madalena Caldeira summarises the practice as ‘a way of attracting talent’, considering that ‘in a more competitive labour market and more demanding recruitment processes, companies use this type of instrument to get the workers they want’.

The payment of these incentives can be part of the contract or have specific clauses, but it is not provided for in the Labour Code and is different from productivity or performance bonuses.

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