Corporate employment advisory in Peru

A company that employs people in Peru makes employment decisions every week: whether a new hire can be engaged on a fixed-term contract, whether a group bonus counts toward statutory benefits, whether a manager can change a shift pattern, how to answer an employee’s complaint. For a foreign-owned business those decisions are often taken by people who know the group’s policies well and Peruvian law very little. That gap is where most avoidable exposure is created.

The business problem

Peruvian employment law is protective, formal and detailed. The starting presumption is that any personal, paid and subordinated service is an employment relationship of indefinite duration. Statutory benefits such as CTS (a severance fund the employer deposits twice a year into a bank account in the employee’s name) and gratificaciones (two statutory bonuses paid in July and December) are calculated on a pay base that is easy to get wrong. SUNAFIL, Peru’s national labor inspection authority, can review all of this at any time and has the power to impose fines per infringement.

Regional teams rarely need a treatise. They need to know whether a decision is lawful, what it will cost, what documents it requires and what could go wrong. Our overview of employment compliance in Peru explains the system; this service applies it to the company’s actual questions.

How we approach it

We treat each question as a business decision with a legal component. We first ask what the company is trying to achieve and on what timeline. We then set out the mandatory Peruvian rule, the way the inspectorate or the courts tend to apply it, and the options available. Where the law leaves room for judgment, we say so and explain the trade-off. Where it does not, we say that too.

Advice is written in English or Spanish, or both, and is addressed to whoever instructs us. For recurring themes we prepare short bilingual memos that the regional office can reuse, so the same question does not have to be answered from scratch each time a new manager arrives.

What the engagement includes, and its limits

The service covers individual employment questions, adaptation of group policies, draft communications to employees, contract addenda and a periodic note on regulatory changes that affect the operation. It is the natural entry point for companies that are still building their local structure, and it often leads to an employment audit once the first questions reveal wider gaps.

We do not run payroll, act as the employer of record or take management decisions on the company’s behalf. Our role is to advise and to prepare the documents; the company decides. Litigation and inspection defense are handled as separate matters when they arise, and we do not promise any particular outcome from an authority or a court.

Coordination with the parent company, finance and payroll

Employment decisions in Peru almost always touch payroll and cost. We therefore write with the finance team in mind: when a recommendation changes the pay base, triggers a benefit or creates a contingent liability, we flag it explicitly so that the controller can provision for it. Where the company works with an external payroll provider, we coordinate with them on the implementation of the advice rather than leaving the local team to translate it. Annual deadlines are easier to manage with a shared reference such as our employment compliance calendar, and questions about the size of past exposure can draw on our note on identifying employment liabilities.

Getting started

Most engagements begin with a short call in which the regional or local team describes the operation and the questions on the table. From there we agree how questions will be sent, who receives the answers and in which language, so that advice reaches the people who need to act on it.