How to hire an employee in BC, step by step.

This guide walks through hiring your first employee in British Columbia, with notes for the rest of Canada. It's general information, not legal or tax advice. For anything specific to your business, check with your accountant or an employment lawyer.

How to hire an employee in BC: the steps

To hire an employee in BC, confirm the person is an employee and not a contractor, open a CRA payroll account, register with WorkSafeBC, and learn the Employment Standards basics. Then post the job with a pay range, interview within the Human Rights Code, make a written offer, collect a SIN and TD1 forms, and run payroll every month.

• Decide whether it's an employee or a contractor.
• Open a CRA payroll account.
• Register with WorkSafeBC.
• Learn the BC Employment Standards basics.
• Write the job post and put it on Job Bank and Indeed.
• Screen and interview within the BC Human Rights Code.
• Make the offer and collect the SIN, TD1 and TD1BC.
• Onboard, with a safety orientation before the first shift.
• Keep up with remittances, T4s and ROEs.

Steps 2 and 3 take time to process, so start them a few weeks before you want someone working.

Step 1: Is it an employee or a contractor?

It depends on how the work really happens, not on what you call it. The CRA looks at the whole working relationship, and a contract that says "contractor" doesn't settle it.

Outside Quebec, the CRA weighs these questions:

• Control. Can you direct what work is done and how? Your right to control counts even if you never use it.
• Tools and equipment. Does the worker supply and maintain their own significant tools?
• Helpers. Can they send someone else or hire an assistant, or must they do the work themselves?
• Financial risk. Do they carry their own costs and liability?
• Investment and management. Do they run an actual business with its own investment?
• Profit or loss. Can they make more, or lose money, by how they price and manage the work?

If most of the answers point to you, it's probably employment. If you're not sure, the CRA will give a CPP/EI ruling. WorkSafeBC makes its own call too. It warns that some contractors may be your workers for coverage, which leaves you paying their premiums.

Step 2: Open a CRA payroll account

You need a CRA business number with a payroll program account before your first remittance is due. If you already have a business number for GST/HST, you only add the payroll account to it.

• The payroll account number is your nine-digit business number plus RP and four digits, like 123456789RP0001.
• Since November 3, 2025, new business numbers and program accounts are registered online through Business Registration Online.
• New employers start as regular remitters. Your deductions are due by the 15th of the month after you pay your employee.

From each paycheque you withhold income tax, CPP contributions and EI premiums. You also pay an employer share of CPP and EI on top. The 2026 numbers are in the cost section below.

Step 3: Register with WorkSafeBC

If you hire even one worker in BC, full-time, part-time, casual or on contract, you're required to register with WorkSafeBC. Apply before your first hire.

• WorkSafeBC suggests applying 30 days before you hire. Review takes about 10 business days.
• Premiums are a rate per $100 of payroll. The rate depends on your business's classification unit, not on each job.
• The 2026 average base rate is $1.55 per $100 of assessable payroll, unchanged for the ninth year in a row.
• Office businesses pay far less than trades. An accounting office pays $0.15 per $100 in 2026. A house builder or renovator pays $2.88.
• Premiums stop at $127,500 of earnings per worker in 2026.

Step 4: Know the BC Employment Standards basics

The Employment Standards Act sets the minimums for pay, hours, time off and records for most BC employees. You can offer more but not less. These are the rules a first-time employer runs into most.

$18.25

an hour, BC's minimum wage since June 1, 2026, per the BC government

11

statutory holidays in BC, per the BC government

4%

minimum vacation pay, rising to 6% after five years, per the BC government

• Pay at least twice a month, within 8 days after the pay period ends (s. 17).
• Give a wage statement every payday that shows hours, pay rate, deductions, and gross and net pay.
• Overtime is 1.5 times the regular wage after 8 hours in a day or 40 in a week, and double after 12 hours in a day (s. 40).
• No one works more than 5 hours in a row without a meal break of at least 30 minutes (s. 32).
• Vacation is 2 weeks after 12 months and 3 weeks after 5 years. Someone employed 5 calendar days or less gets no vacation pay.
• An employee who qualifies gets an average day's pay for each stat holiday. If they work it, they also get time-and-a-half for the hours worked, and double time past 12 hours.
• After 90 days, employees get up to 5 paid sick days a year.
• Keep payroll records in English at your main place of business in BC for 4 years. That covers hours each day, pay rate, deductions, vacation and stat pay.

Step 5: Write and post the job

A BC job post has to show the pay. Since November 1, 2023, provincially regulated employers must include the wage or salary on every publicly advertised job posting.

• Post a single wage or a range, like "$24 to $28 an hour". "Competitive wage" or "up to $30" doesn't count.
• You can't ask applicants what other employers paid them.
• The ad can't state a preference about age, sex, family status, religion or other protected grounds unless it's a genuine requirement of the job.
• Describe the actual work and the hours, and list the must-haves apart from the nice-to-haves.

Start with Job Bank, the federal job board. It's free for employers, and it matches your post to job seekers' profiles. Then post on Indeed, which has free and paid listings. Ask your own network too. Customers, suppliers and staff often know someone.

To set a fair wage, check Job Bank's local numbers. In the Lower Mainland, the median is $28.85 an hour for an administrative assistant, $24.00 for a receptionist and $25.00 for a general office worker.

Step 6: Screen and interview within the BC Human Rights Code

Judge candidates on whether they can do the job. The BC Human Rights Code says you can't refuse to employ someone because of a protected ground.

In employment, those grounds are Indigenous identity, race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, political belief, religion, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, and age. A criminal conviction that has nothing to do with the job is protected too.

• Write five or six questions about the work and ask every candidate the same ones.
• Skip questions about age, kids or plans for a family, where someone's from, religion and health. They don't tell you who can do the job, and if you turn the person down, they can make the decision look discriminatory.
• Ask about availability in terms of the schedule. "This role works Saturdays. Does that work for you?" is fine.
• Take notes on job-related answers and keep them with the posting.
• Check references for the finalist, with their permission.

Step 7: Make the offer: offer letter, TD1, TD1BC and SIN

Make the offer in writing, then collect a SIN and TD1 forms when the person starts. Payroll can't be set up properly without them.

• The offer letter should state the job title, start date, wage, hours, pay schedule, vacation and any probation period. An employment lawyer can review your template once, and you can reuse it.
• Ask for the employee's social insurance number within three days of their start.
• Every new employee fills out the federal TD1. If they claim more than the basic personal amount, they also fill out the TD1BC.
• Keep the TD1 forms with the employee's records. Don't send them to the CRA. If the employee doesn't hand one in, deduct tax using only the basic personal amount.

Step 8: Onboard your new employee

In BC, onboarding includes a safety orientation before the person starts work. WorkSafeBC requires it for young and new workers, and you have to keep a record that it happened.

• Before the first shift, cover the supervisor's name, workplace hazards, emergency procedures, first aid and how to report an injury.
• Set up payroll with the wage, pay schedule and TD1 claim amounts.
• Give access to email, software and keys, and write down what was given.
• Have one written checklist for the first week, so the new person isn't stuck waiting to ask you.
• Book a check-in at 30 and 90 days. The 90-day mark is also when paid sick days start.

If most of how the work gets done lives in your head, write it down before day one. A new hire who can look up the answer doesn't have to wait for you.

Step 9: Your ongoing obligations: remittances, T4s and ROEs

Once you have an employee, the CRA and Service Canada deadlines come every month and every year. Missing them brings penalties and interest. The CRA's employer guide is the reference for all of these.

• Monthly: send the income tax, CPP and EI you withheld, plus your employer share, by the 15th of the next month.
• Every payday: give a wage statement and update your payroll records.
• Yearly: file T4 slips and the T4 Summary, and give employees their T4s, by the last day of February.
• When someone stops working: issue a Record of Employment. An electronic ROE is due within five calendar days after the end of the pay period in which their earnings stopped.
• Keep CRA payroll records for at least six years.
• Report your payroll and pay premiums to WorkSafeBC on its schedule.

How much does it cost to hire an employee in Canada?

On top of wages, a Canadian employer pays CPP, EI and workers' compensation premiums. In BC, that adds about 8% to an office worker's pay. Vacation, stat holidays and sick days are paid time when the person isn't working, and finding them takes weeks.

Here's an administrative assistant in the Lower Mainland at the Job Bank median of $28.85 an hour, full time, in 2026:

• Wages: 40 hours a week for 52 weeks is $60,008.
• CPP, employer share: 5.95% of earnings above the $3,500 basic exemption, up to $74,600. That comes to about $3,362.
• CPP2: 4% on earnings between $74,600 and $85,000. That's $0 at this wage.
• EI, employer share: 1.4 times the employee's 1.63% on insurable earnings up to $68,900. That comes to about $1,369.
• WorkSafeBC at an office rate of $0.15 per $100 comes to about $90. At a house builder's $2.88, the same wage costs about $1,728.
• BC Employer Health Tax: $0. Businesses with BC payroll of $1 million or less are exempt.

That's about $64,830 a year before benefits, a computer, software seats or training. Of those 2,080 paid hours, two weeks of vacation and 11 stat holidays are 168 hours off, and up to 5 sick days can come on top.

25.9%

of Canadian job vacancies had been open 90 days or more in Q2 2026, per Statistics Canada

94%

of Canadian hiring managers say hiring takes longer than two years ago, per Robert Half

44 days

median time to fill a non-executive role in the US, per SHRM

SHRM's 2025 survey of US employers put the median cost per hire for a non-executive role at US$1,200. That's job ads, recruiter time and checks. It doesn't count your own hours spent reading applications and interviewing.

Hiring in another province?

Half of these steps are federal and work the same across Canada. The other half depend on the province where the employee works.

These are the same in every province:

• The CRA business number and payroll account.
• CPP and EI deductions. Quebec runs its own pension plan and has a lower EI rate, 1.30% for employees in 2026.
• The federal TD1, plus that province's own TD1 form.
• Monthly remittances, T4s and ROEs.

These change by province:

• The workers' compensation board and its rates. The 2026 average is $0.95 per $100 in Manitoba and $1.55 in BC.
• Employment standards: minimum wage, overtime, vacation, stat holidays and sick days. Manitoba's minimum wage is $16.40 as of October 1, 2026, and vacation pay is 4%, then 6% after five years, the same as BC.
• Payroll taxes. Manitoba's Health and Post Secondary Education Tax Levy exempts payroll up to $2.5 million, compared with $1 million for BC's Employer Health Tax.
• Human rights codes and pay transparency rules.

Start with the province's workers' comp board and employment standards office:

• Manitoba: WCB Manitoba and Manitoba Employment Standards.
• Alberta: WCB Alberta and Alberta Employment Standards.
• Ontario: WSIB and the Employment Standards Act guide.

Before you post the job: list the tasks

Before you hire, write down everything the new person would do in a typical week. Then split it into the work that needs judgment and the work that repeats. You may not need to hire for the repeating part.

The judgment work is dealing with an upset customer, deciding which job to take, training someone and fixing what went wrong. That needs a person. The repeating work usually looks like this:

• Answering the phone and booking appointments.
• Replying to the inbox and following up on quotes nobody answered.
• Sending invoices and chasing the late ones.
• Copying details from one system into another.
• Building the schedule and sending reminders.
• Filling in forms, permits and other paperwork.

Want to see this mapped to your business? Book a free call →

We're Syncafy, and that repeating work is what we build software for. We build it for your business, and you own the software and the data. A roadmap costs $750, which we credit to the build. A fixed-quote build runs $4,000 to $8,000, and running it costs $750 to $1,500 a month. The first year comes to $13,000 to $26,000.

Compare that with the $64,830 full-time admin above. A part-time receptionist at 20 hours a week at the $24.00 median costs about $26,840 a year once CPP, EI and WorkSafeBC are added. These aren't like-for-like trades. Software won't calm down an angry customer. But if the repeating tasks add up to most of a role, you may not need to hire for that part. You might hire for fewer hours, or hire someone to do the work only a person can do.

To run your own numbers, try the employee cost calculator. Put in the wage, hours and province, and it adds the employer costs for you.

We can also automate the hiring paperwork when you do hire. That means sorting applications against the must-haves you set, booking interviews into your calendar, and sending the offer letter, TD1 forms and first-week checklist. You still read the shortlist and make every decision. For the phones, see our post on the AI receptionist. For training, see how to get the process out of the owner's head.