Haiti is a small Caribbean country that makes up the western half of the island of Hispaniola, together with its eastern neighbor, the Dominican Republic. The World Bank designates Haiti as a low-income country, and it’s one that has struggled to rebuild after devastating earthquakes in 2010 and 2021.

Haitians, however, are resourceful, and the nation’s economy has returned to growth. In 2025, the nation’s GDP is worth $33.55 billion, though with a population of 12.56 million people, this still represents a low per capita GDP of $2,670 per year. Only around 5.281 million are part of the labor force, as the country’s population is quite young.

Export CategoryExport Value (USD)
Clothing & Textiles$1.13 billion
Essential Oils $37 million
Cocoa$29 million
Mangoes$17 million
Coffee$12 million

Agriculture employs a great number of the country’s workers, but its contribution to Haiti’s GDP is small. Industry contributes around 25% and services over 47%. Important services like tourism, finance, retail, and transportation have been increasing in recent years and helping to rebuild the economy.

Haiti is still a minor exporter with its main products being clothing and textiles traded with the US, Canada, Mexico, France, and India. This is a country in transition with its business and political structures currently being redeveloped. This means that for investors, there are also numerous opportunities to get in on the ground floor and help build better services and infrastructure to help the country.

One way to get into this market is to source, hire, and employ local staff with the help of a Haiti PEO. Here, we’ll explain how these service providers work and the responsibilities they take on in Haiti.

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What is a PEO?

To understand how a Professional Employment Organization works, it’s crucial to understand the role they play in assisting investors manage their employees. If you were to register an entity in Haiti and start recruiting local staff, you’d immediately run into difficulties. Without a clear understanding of the labor market in this country and the employment laws that protect your interests and those of your workers, you’d struggle to hire anyone and employ them compliantly. 

Instead, you can engage a PEO to help you with all of these challenges. PEOs are essentially HR outsourcing organizations that also work to manage compliance for their clients. They can replace whole HR departments or work in tandem with them to ensure that all local laws are being respected and important procedures are taken care of.

PEOs employ local experts in HR and Haitian law for these purposes and may also employ recruiters to help clients source local staff effectively. They manage payroll, taxes, benefits, paid time off (PTO), and all other HR administration so their clients can focus on their core business activities. They also manage compliance to greatly reduce their clients’ risk of employing workers in foreign countries.

Their professional knowledge reduces the chances that their clients will be penalized for non-compliance or that they’ll experience high employee turnover. You may also have heard of another similar type of service provider called an Employer of Record (EOR). Like PEOs, EORs manage outsourced HR services while ensuring compliance for their clients.

The main difference between these two types of providers is that PEOs work with clients who own local entities, while EORs use their own entities to hire employees in Haiti for their clients. These days, the terms PEO and EOR or often used interchangeably as their service provisions overlap so much.

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Why Choose a PEO in Haiti?

Do you speak Haitian Creole? Are you familiar with the ins and outs of the Haitian Labor Code? If not, your business may be a perfect candidate for engaging a PEO.

PEOs possess a blend of local expertise and legal knowledge that make them excellent partners when moving to a new country like Haiti. They can help to ensure the success of your venture by helping you maintain legal compliance and providing the mandatory benefits and conditions your Haitian employees are entitled to.

For example, when you employ Haitian workers, you’ll need to know the following standards: 

  • Regular hours: Haitians work 48 hours a week and normally can’t work over nine hours a day. They must receive midday breaks of at least 1.5 hours, though these are not counted in their working hours.
  • Overtime: Employees must be paid 150% of their normal wages when they work overtime hours. They are allowed to work as many as 80 hours per quarter (three months).
  • Annual Leave: Haitians who have worked for a full year are entitled to 15 calendar days of paid leave per year. They accumulate this leave at the rate of 1.25 days for each month worked.
  • Maternity leave: Expecting mothers are entitled to 12 weeks of fully paid maternity leave. The first six weeks of this leave are currently paid by the employer. In the future, the entire leave will instead be paid through social security.

Starting a business in Haiti is essentially as difficult as it can be, with the World Bank giving the country a rank of 189th out of 190 countries for ease of business setup. It requires 12 separate procedures to register a société anonyme (a public limited company or PLC) in Haiti and can take at least 97 days to complete incorporation.

This includes registering with the Haitian tax authority, the DGI (Direction Générale des Impôts) and the social security agencies, the OFATMA (Office d’Assurance Accidents du Travail, Maladie et Maternité) and the ONA (Office Nationale d’Assurance). You’ll need to withhold pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) taxes and remit them to the DGI while also reporting regularly.

With a PEO partner, you can relieve yourself of this burden and let it perform this task for you. It will also calculate employee and employer contributions and can pay them to the OFATMA and ONA for you. This will help to keep you compliant, as will the PEO’s professionally produced employment agreements that it provides for you to contract your workers compliantly.

In addition, a PEO partner can advise you on the salaries and benefits to offer your workers and help you during contract negotiations. A few PEO providers also offer recruitment services, actively seeking out skilled Haitian workers who meet your specific needs.

Services Offered by Haiti PEOs

A Professional Employment Organization in Haiti can become your partner and the co-employer of your local employees. It will use its cloud-based platform, professional support, and legal knowledge to manage these HR functions for you:

Payroll Management

Managing payroll is one of the most important services that PEOs perform, precisely because of how complex it can be in a different country. All modern PEOs use cloud-based platforms to manage administration and provide their services. When new employees are hired, they are added to the PEO’s platform, and a calculation is set up for each worker based on their salary, benefits, and tax obligations.

To run payroll, the PEO needs time and attendance data for each pay period, which the client must provide. Many PEOs offer time-tracking tools right on their platforms so that clients don’t need to bother with other software. With this data, they process payroll, calculate tax withholdings and benefits contributions, and pay the employees.

Employee Benefits Administration

Haitian employees must receive the benefits that the law entitles them to. These benefits include PTO like annual, sick, and maternity leaves, as well as support from social security programs in the country. Haitian employees and their employees must pay into the following schemes:

Benefit

Employee Contribution

Employer Contribution

OFATMA Occupational Accident Insurance

n/a

2.0% for commercial enterprises

3.0% for agricultural and industrial enterprises

6.0% for mining companies

OFATMA Sickness and Maternity Insurance

3%

3%

ONA Old-Age Insurance

6%

6%

Employers can also offer additional benefits to help them attract top talent to their organizations. Most PEOs offer links to plan providers so their clients can offer supplementary benefits like pensions, private health insurance, and equity to their employees. The PEOs administer these benefits for additional fees.

Tax Compliance

Every employer in Haiti must obtain a TIN (tax identification number) from the DGI so it can legally withhold taxes from its employees’ paychecks. Employees who have income levels higher than 60,000 HTG (Haitian gourdes) per year (around 460 USD) must pay taxes on that income. Employers are required to withhold it and remit these amounts to the DGI according to the following progressive rates:

Income (HTG)

Tax Rate

0 – 60,000

0%

60,001 – 240,000

10%

240,001 – 480,000

15%

480,001 – 1,000,000

25%

Over 1,000,000

30%

 

Recruitment and Onboarding

Many PEOs don’t provide anything in terms of support for recruitment. However, some employ professional recruiters who will work with clients to assess their hiring needs and then use their talent pools and local contacts to find workers who possess the right skills. Some other PEOs provide tools like applicant tracking systems (ATSs) and connections to local job boards to help their clients source talent on their own.

Whether the client or the PEO finds a worker, the PEO drives their onboarding procedures. It will generally provide the new employees with an onboarding portal that helps them upload their documents and provide necessary information for processing. By automating most of the onboarding process, most experienced PEOs can onboard workers in just a few days.

Employment Contracts

While most people in Haiti speak Haitian Creole, French is used for business, and contracts must be concluded in this language. Local PEOs will help to generate contracts for your Haitian workers, ensuring that their terms are fully compliant with local laws.

They will also let you know if your workers may be covered by collective agreements. Contracts in Haiti can be permanent or for fixed terms up to a total of five years, including any renewals.

Terminations

If you hire workers, you’ll also eventually need to terminate some contracts as well. As your co-employer, your PEO partner can help with this task as well. It can help you assess the legality of your dismissals and decide if you need to provide notice and severance pay.

Notice periods are standard for workers who’ve worked for at least three months and last from 15 days to four months, depending on the length of the worker’s service. Severance pay in Haiti can range from half a month’s salary to four months’ salary, again depending on seniority.

Advantages of Using a PEO in Haiti

Why do so many employers choose to engage PEOs when they hire Haitian workers? The advantages of this relationship include:

  • Quick market entry: PEOs can help you get started working in Haiti efficiently by onboarding your workers in just a few days. 
  • Cost savings: PEOs can create efficiency, especially for small teams. Using a PEO to manage HR for your local employees in Haiti can provide them with professional services often at a lower cost than hiring an in-house HR team.
  • Risk mitigation: PEO staff have local knowledge and experience, which you can leverage to ensure compliance with all local employment laws.
  • Focus on core business activities: Outsourcing HR to a PEO helps you reduce your administrative burden so you’re free to focus on functions that create value.

Steps to Engage a PEO in Haiti

If you’re interested in working with a PEO in Haiti, you’ll normally need to engage one in the following way:

  • Choose a PEO: Focus on price, services offered, and reputation to help you select the right partner for your needs.
  • Have an initial consultation: Contact your selected partner for a consultation in which you’ll explain your needs, and the PEO will give its service offering and price.
  • Sign a service agreement: Once each party’s obligations are agreed upon, you can enter an agreement for monthly or annual service with the provider. With this done, you can get started onboarding Haitian workers.

Partner With a PEO in Haiti To Expand Your Business Successfully

Haiti is a country full of untapped potential for businesses looking to expand into the Caribbean. While it faces challenges in infrastructure and administration, opportunities abound in sectors like manufacturing, textiles, tourism, and logistics. With a young and resourceful population, the nation’s workforce is ready to support new ventures—especially with the right HR support.

Expanding into Haiti with the help of a PEO allows you to hire quickly and compliantly without the long delays and complexities of entity setup. From managing payroll and taxes to ensuring adherence to local labor laws, a trusted Haiti PEO ensures smooth operations and long-term success.

Looking for a trusted PEO provider in Haiti? Remote People connects businesses with reliable PEO partners specializing in HR support, local hiring, payroll management, and tax compliance. Contact us today to simplify your hiring process and start growing your business in Haiti!