New hiring incentives

This past January, Royal Decree Law 1/2023 was published, establishing a significant number of bonuses aimed at promoting the hiring of certain profiles, such as people with disabilities, victims of gender violence or human trafficking, people at risk of social exclusion, long-term unemployed or victims of terrorism, as well as young people under 30 years old who are beneficiaries of the National Youth Guarantee System.

Likewise, the royal decree encourages business conduct in terms of hiring. Companies can obtain bonuses for hiring/incorporating as partners workers who have entered the company with a practical training contract, hiring training personnel, transforming training and relief contracts into permanent contracts, carrying out training contracts in alternation, or hiring research personnel under predoctoral contract modalities.

Additionally, measures have also been established to promote work-life balance. Thus, people who replace workers during situations such as childbirth, child care, breastfeeding leave, or risk during pregnancy, can obtain bonuses in their contracts. Moreover, the possibility of changing the workplace of pregnant women in case of a risk pregnancy is established.

Furthermore, bonuses are foreseen, such as the transformation of temporary contracts into fixed-discontinuous contracts in the agricultural sector, or fixed-discontinuous contracts carried out to personnel in the hospitality, tourism, and commerce sectors.

Regarding the measures approved in the field of self-employed workers, the working partners or worker partners of cooperative societies registered in the RETA (Special Regime for Self-Employed Workers) are beneficiaries of the bonus of contributions during the rest for childbirth, adoption, guardianship for adoption, fostering, risk during pregnancy, or risk during natural breastfeeding. However, the bonus for indefinite hiring by the self-employed worker as an employee of their spouse, ancestors, descendants, and other relatives by blood or affinity up to the second degree, inclusive, is repealed.

In short, this law represents an opportunity for people in vulnerable situations to improve their employability and for companies to counter.