How a US travel company fixed a Dutch employment compliance gap they didn't know existed

About the company

A US-based educational travel organization that has been running programs globally, serving high school students, gap year travelers, college study abroad participants, and adult learners, partnering with more than 30 schools and universities across the US.

The challenge

Their company had been employing a single team member in the Netherlands without realizing the approach had meaningful gaps. They described their situation plainly: they simply didn't know what they didn't know, and had no reliable way to surface their own blind spots to ensure they were compliant.

The most concrete sign of the gap emerged during their early conversations with Rivermate. The organization had been paying their Netherlands-based employee an annual salary arrangement that doesn't meet Dutch employment requirements.

It was upon their employee’s EOR recommendation of Rivermate that quickly started the engagement.

What was at stake

Their company was carrying compliance exposure they couldn't see. The most specific risk visible in the inputs was the payment structure. Dutch employment law sets clear requirements around payment intervals, and departing from them creates a range of downstream compliance risks. These include – but are not limited to – correct calculation and payment of holiday allowance (vakantiegeld, legally set at a minimum of 8% of gross annual salary), accurate payroll tax withholding and remittance, proper social insurance contributions, and correct registration with Dutch employment authorities.

They also noted that their concern extended to the employee herself: the risk wasn't only to the organization but to the individual, who could face gaps in their statutory entitlements and protections if the arrangement wasn't properly structured. That dual concern – for the organization's compliance and the employee's security – was a significant driver of the decision to act.

Why they chose Rivermate

Their company came to the table already motivated to fix the situation.

From there, the conversations themselves did the rest. Initial meetings with the Rivermate team were, in their words, "incredibly informative, professional, and clear in expectations." Each exchange clarified the actual requirements they hadn't been meeting in the Netherlands and made visible the gap between what they had been doing and what Dutch employment law required. The process of asking questions answered their early uncertainty about whether they genuinely needed this level of specialist support: they did.

The Rivermate team members they worked with most closely during onboarding were Karl van der Weert, Head of Account Management, and Dasola Jikiemi, Customer Success Manager. Karl's responsive, hands-on approach and Dasola's support throughout the process were named specifically by them as reasons they felt confident in the decision. They had been uncertain at first whether the cost made sense. The quality and speed of the team's responses during discovery resolved that uncertainty before the proposal was even sent.

How Rivermate helped

The engagement moved quickly on both sides. The US travel company had identified Rivermate, understood the urgency, and were ready to commit. Rivermate's response matched that pace.

Following the initial call, the team sent a proposal within 30 minutes. The US travel company reviewed it and gave the green light the following day.

The practical center of the work was the conversion of the employee's annual payment structure. Rivermate restructured this into a monthly invoiced arrangement that met Dutch employment law requirements, including correct tax treatment. They highlighted this specifically as the moment the value of the engagement became most concrete: "their ability to convert our annual employee salary into a monthly invoice that met all Dutch employee requirements and taxes, was exactly what we needed, in the easiest way possible for us."

Karl van der Weert and Dasola Jikiemi led the onboarding process, handling their questions at each stage and ensuring the transition was smooth for both the organization and the employee. They described the team as feeling "like an extension of our organization" – something they attributed to the named, responsive working relationship rather than a ticket-based support process.

The engagement completed without complications. Everything was clear from the start, and the timeline – the most critical variable for them – was met without difficulty.

What this means for similar companies

If your organization has one or two employees in the Netherlands and has been handling the employment arrangement in-house, the situation this travel company found themselves in is more common than most HR or operations leads realize. Dutch employment law carries specific, mandatory requirements – around payment intervals, holiday allowance, social insurance, and employer registration – that are easy to miss when there is no specialist support in place and no audit mechanism to surface gaps.

For mission-driven organizations, nonprofits, or smaller companies that employ a handful of international team members without the scale to justify a local entity, EOR is typically the fastest and most compliant path. Rivermate's Netherlands team handles the full employment relationship: contracts, payroll, tax registration, and ongoing compliance, so your internal team doesn't need to develop country-specific expertise for every market you operate in.