A1 certificates & posted workers coming to Poland

For employers posting an employee into Poland from another EU/EEA country.

Which direction is this? This page covers the inbound direction — a foreign employer sending someone to work in Poland. If instead you are a Polish company or sole trader posting staff abroad and need an A1 from ZUS, that is a different service in a different direction, handled by Biuro Rachunkowe Precyzja, our parent firm.

The short version

Posting an employee to Poland for a genuine, time-limited assignment is not the same as hiring locally — and the difference decides where social security is due.

For a real posting, the employee can generally stay on their home country’s social-security system, evidenced by an A1 certificate issued in that country under the EU coordination rules (Regulation 883/2004). The question that matters is the boundary: how long, how regularly, and whether the arrangement has quietly become ordinary employment in Poland. We help you read that boundary honestly — and where you have crossed it, we set up local employment properly instead. One does not stretch to cover the other.

Two different things — don’t mix them up

This is the single most-confused point, so it is worth being plain about. Posting and local employment are separate arrangements, and choosing the right one is a legal question about the facts — not a preference.

Posting (delegowanie / A1). A defined assignment with a foreseeable end. The employee stays employed by, and integrated with, the home employer; they remain on the home social-security system, and the A1 is the evidence of that. This is the right tool when someone is genuinely sent to Poland for a project or a period, then returns.

Local employment (lokalne zatrudnienie). The employee works from Poland on an ongoing basis, as part of everyday operations, with no real end date. Here Polish social security generally applies and a Polish employment contract is the honest structure — the hire-in-Poland route, not a stretched A1.

An A1 does not convert a local job into a posting, and a posting does not replace local employment when the facts have moved on. They sit side by side; the work you actually do decides which applies.

Where posting ends and employment begins

An A1 is the correct tool for a real posting: a defined assignment, the employee still integrated with the home employer, a foreseeable end. It is the wrong tool when someone has simply moved to Poland and works from there indefinitely — at that point Polish social security generally applies, and forcing a posting to fit does not change the underlying facts. Getting this wrong is common and avoidable; the fix, when the line has been crossed, is to set up local employment, not to keep renewing a certificate that no longer matches reality.

How we help

We assess which side of the line you are on and set up whichever is correct — coordination for a genuine posting, or local employment where the facts call for it. We do not push one over the other; the assessment follows the facts, and we tell you plainly what they point to. Backed by Biuro Rachunkowe Precyzja, cross-border since 2017.

Related: if the assignment is really becoming a job, see how to hire an employee in Poland and the social-security obligations that follow.

When it is time to talk to us

Reach out when you are planning to send someone to Poland, or when a posting has run long enough that you are no longer sure an A1 still fits.