Employment in Norway, onshore

Notification of inclusion

By inclusion, we mean when an employment commences or when an employee starts work again after being signed off, for example, when given leave of absence.  The employer must indicate the first day the employee is entitled to work, or is obliged to work. Notification of inclusion into service must be submitted if the intention is for employment to last at least seven days, and is likely to involve at least four hours’ work per week on average.

Employees who are employed on seasonal work, for example, as employees at a winter sfports facility, must be signed off when the season is over and then included again when work restarts.  This must be done even if the person concerned has fixed terms and conditions of employment. 

The following are not to be reported to the Register:

Persons in receipt of pay for care work
Apprentices paid by the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration
Persons elected by popular vote

There is no facility for reporting future inclusions.

Working hours

The average agreed working hours per week must be stated here in numberf of hours.  This means for example that 37 and a half hours must be recorded as 37.50. Job percentages must be converted to hours per week. Employees who are employed on an hourly basis must be included in the Register if during the course of a month, they work an average of more than four hours per week.  The employer must estimate the anticipated working hours.

Occupation

State here what the person’s job is.  Occupation must be stated in accordance with the occupation standard coding STYRK, maintained by Statistics Norway. You can search by title or business activity code in this directory.  You will find your business code on your annual control/annual return.  When using the electronic form at EE-notification, you will be able to use the search function to find the occupation code.

Alternatively, employers can specify the occupation in free text if using the manual form.  If the occupation title is provided in free text, it must be described as precisely as possible. For example, do not simply state worker, but driver, watchman, carpenter, refuse collector, storeman, etc.  Do not use salaried worker but accounting officer, office assistant, cashier or similar.  And not just apprentice but apprentice electrician, apprentice bricklayer etc. Not just executive but personnel executive, sales executive, finance executive etc.  Not just manager, but managing director, general manager, personnel manager, financial director and so on.  Avoid using terms that suggest something other than an occupation like for example, temporary staff, monthly paid, extra help, shift worker, relief worker.

Changes

State here the date when a change of employment has taken place. Notification of amendments must be sent when there is a change in agreed working hours or if the employee is being transferred to another activity (operation) within the same unit (applies only to conglomerate enterprises).  Changes of occupation need only be reported in connection with the annual return.  Current updating of occupation will be automatically generated for those who report electronically via their payroll and personnel systems.  There is no facility to accept future changes.

Termination

Employment ceases from the moment the employee is no longer entitled to carry out work nor has a duty to perform it.  Notification of termination must be submitted when employment ceases either by leave of absence, whether paid or unpaid, for more than 14 days, or for maternity leave and study leave.  This does not apply however, when the person on leave holds a paid office from his/her original employer during the leave of absence, nor does this apply if the employee is undertaking refresher training with the armed forces.  Notification of termination must also be reported in the event of illness lasting more than 12 months and when the average working hours per week over a consecutive period of at least two weeks is less than four hours.  The same will apply to persons on severance packages/redundancy pay who are not working, and if the employee leaves the country for more than 12 months in connection with employment.  There is no facility to report termination at some future date.