Your legal employer can change without your job changing. What carries over and what doesn’t

Disclosure: I work at BorderlessAI. We are an employer of record, which means we are sometimes the company whose name is on somebody’s payslip instead of the company they actually work for.

This comes up here every few months and no word of a lie, the answers are usually a mess, mine included last time.

Caveats to this: this varies by country more than I can accurately cover, and I have been wrong about a specific country before. You need to double-check it all and not just go with the flow if you’re unsure. I am writing this so that you know what to ask.

So, here’s how the process usually runs.

• Your continuous service date should carry across. In a lot of places, notice and severance are calculated from it, and it is also the field most often entered wrong. Get it in writing before the switch completes rather than after.
• Accrued leave either moves across as a balance or gets paid out (both are normal). Which one depends on the country and on what the two providers agreed between them, and you are allowed to ask which.
• Benefits enrollment often restarts, including waiting periods you already sat through. Usually fixable, usually only if somebody asks.
• Pension contributions can pause for a cycle during the handover. Ask when the first one under the new arrangement lands.

If your employer cannot answer these, the provider can and your employer is allowed to ask them on your behalf. You are not the customer in this arrangement, which is most of why nobody explains it to you, also some people just do not ask the right questions.