Employment contract rules in Croatia: form, probation and fixed terms

A Croatian contract of employment (ugovor o radu) must be concluded in writing, and the employee must have a copy before starting work. Both rules come from Article 14 of the Labour Act (Zakon o radu), and they apply to every employer, from a five-person start-up to a ministry.

The law also deals with the case where nobody signed anything. If the contract was not put in writing, the employer has to confirm its terms to the employee in writing, again before the first working day. If it does neither, the law presumes the job is permanent, which removes any argument that the arrangement was temporary.

A second document follows close behind. The employer files the employee’s pension and health insurance registration and must hand over a copy of that registration no more than 8 days after the deadline for filing it. Together with the signed contract, it is the paper trail an inspector from the State Inspectorate (Državni inspektorat) expects to find.

Contracts are presumed to be open-ended (na neodređeno vrijeme) unless the law allows a fixed term. That default shapes everything else in this guide: probation, fixed terms and working-time variations are all exceptions that need to be written down to count.

Article 15 lists the minimum content of a written contract, and a template that skips one of them gives an inspector an easy point to raise. The twelve items are:

• the parties, each identified by personal identification number (OIB)
• the place of work
• what the job is: a title, or a short account of the duties
• the date the contract is signed and the date work begins
• open-ended or fixed-term status, with the end date for a fixed term
• annual leave, or how it is determined
• the notice procedure and notice periods
• gross pay, its components and the pay periods
• the length of the regular working day or week
• whether the work is full-time or part-time
• training rights offered by the employer
• the length and terms of any probation

Several of these, namely leave, notice, pay periods, hours, training and probation, may be covered by referring to the Labour Act, a collective agreement (kolektivni ugovor) or the employer’s work rules rather than written out in full. Pay itself should still appear as a gross monthly figure; it is what candidates compare, and it is the number every later calculation starts from.

The parties may also agree that the employee chooses the place of work freely. That one line is the basis for a fully remote role, and it interacts with the separate home-working rules covered in our article on remote work in Croatia.

Probation (probni rad) is optional and may last no more than six months. The only permitted extension is for days the employee was away, for example through illness, maternity or parental leave, or paid leave, and even then the actual probation worked may not exceed six months in total.

If the employee does not pass, that is a valid reason to end the contract, up to and including the last day of probation, with notice of at least one week. The decision still has to be in writing. After probation ends, any dismissal needs one of the ordinary grounds and the full notice period, so diary the end date.

Three further rules prevent probation from being stretched. On a fixed-term contract the trial period has to stay in proportion to how long the job is expected to last, so a short contract calls for a short trial. Where a previous contract covering that same job included probation, a new contract for that job cannot impose it again. And a contract that provides for more than six months of probation exposes the employer to a fine of €1,320 to €3,980.

A fixed-term contract (ugovor o radu na određeno vrijeme) is permitted only as an exception, and the objective reason for it must be written into the contract: replacing an absent employee, or work that is limited by its nature or by a particular event. “We would like to see how it goes” is not such a reason; that is what probation is for.

Since 1 January 2023 the limits have been tight:

• one fixed-term contract may last no more than three years
• no more than three successive fixed-term contracts with the same employee, with the total including the first contract kept within three years
• gaps of up to three months do not break the chain, and related employers are counted together
• any change that extends a fixed term counts as a new successive contract
• after hitting the limit, the employer must wait at least six months before offering that employee another fixed term

Replacing an absent employee, completing an EU-funded project, or a ground set by a special law or collective agreement can justify going past three years. Seasonal contracts of up to nine months a year sit outside the limits altogether. Break the rules, or let someone keep working after the term expires, and the contract is treated as open-ended. The employer also risks a fine of €4,110 to €7,960.

Fixed-term staff must be treated no worse than comparable permanent colleagues. After six months, and after any probation, they can make a written request for an open-ended contract, and the employer has to reply with reasons within 30 days, or 60 days where it employs fewer than 20 people.

Full-time work in Croatia means at most 40 hours a week, and where the contract does not specify, 40 hours is presumed. Overtime is lawful only on a written request for reasons such as force majeure or an extraordinary increase in workload; an oral instruction has to be confirmed in writing within seven days.

Total working time including overtime cannot exceed 50 hours in a week, and the yearly overtime ceiling is 180 hours, raised to 250 only where a collective agreement allows it. Breaching these limits is among the most serious offences in the Act, with fines of €8,090 to €13,270. Pregnant employees, parents of children under 8 and part-timers with more than one employer work overtime only if they agree in writing.

Rest periods are fixed by law too: a break of at least 30 minutes on any day of six hours or more, counted as working time; at least 12 hours between working days; and a weekly rest of at least one full day on top of the daily rest, normally on Sunday. Rotas must be issued seven days or more before they take effect, and the Act now sets out a principle of non-availability outside working hours, so the contract should say when, if ever, the employee is expected to answer.

Extra hours, nights, Sundays and public holidays all attract higher pay under Article 94. Only the Sunday uplift has a statutory minimum, 50%, so the contract or work rules should name the percentage for the others rather than leave it to be argued later.

A contract is rarely the same in year three as on day one, and the safest habit is to record every significant change in writing, just as the original terms were. A pay rise, a new title or a move to part-time work should be confirmed by an amended contract or an annex signed by both sides, so the documents always match what is actually happening.

A few changes carry their own rules. Extending a fixed-term contract counts as a new successive contract for the three-year limit. Sending an employee to work to another country for longer than four weeks means adding written terms before the posting begins. Moving someone to home working on a permanent basis, or for more than seven working days a month, brings in the cost-reimbursement clauses described in our remote work guide.

Employees can also add work of their own. A full-time employee may take a limited additional job with another employer under a contract for additional work, although the statutory ban on competing with the employer during employment still applies. And under the Act’s equal-pay rule for men and women, the employer must, on request, tell an employee the criteria used to pay a colleague doing similar work, a point worth keeping in mind when salaries are agreed one by one.

A contract that is called a service agreement but works like a job carries real risk; our misclassification guide sets out the tests.

Employers with 20 or more workers are obliged to adopt work rules (pravilnik o radu) and make them known to staff, except where a collective agreement already covers the same ground. Smaller employers may adopt them voluntarily, which can be convenient because a single set of rules on pay supplements, leave and conduct can then be referred to from every contract.

Salary goes out by bank transfer, with the 15th day after the end of the month as the latest date allowed; within 15 days of each payment the employee is entitled to a written pay statement (obračun plaće). The employer also has to keep records of its workers and their working time. None of that has to be in the contract, but the contract’s pay clause should match how payroll actually runs.

Some clauses belong in the contract only if you want them. A post-employment non-compete must be agreed in writing, may last up to two years, and binds only if the employer pays compensation; our separate guide on how a Croatian employment ends shows how notice and dismissal interact with it.

If you take the employer of record route, we draft and sign the Croatian contract as the legal employer from your job description, salary and start date, and the employee holds a copy before day one. The steps for a first hire are laid out in our guide to a first hire in Croatia, and how an EOR takes on the employer role explains which decisions stay with you. When you compare providers, our view of what a good Croatian EOR does is a useful checklist; the services themselves are summarised at Employer of Record Croatia.