In Switzerland, vacation is a core entitlement for employees and a significant obligation for employers. It gives staff a period of rest while their pay keeps running, under the rules of the Code of Obligations.
The law sets a minimum entitlement, which varies with the employee's age and can be improved by contract or by a collective agreement. How vacation is taken is regulated too, in particular the requirement to let the employee take part of it in one continuous block.
Managing vacation properly therefore means knowing how many days each employee is entitled to, planning absences around the company's needs, and handling it correctly in payroll.
How many vacation days does an employee get in Switzerland?
The Code of Obligations sets a minimum that every employer has to respect. The entitlement is calculated per year of service and depends chiefly on the employee's age.
Employers can offer better terms in the employment contract or under a collective agreement, but never less than the statutory minimum.
The minimum is four weeks for adults
Every adult employee is entitled to at least four weeks of vacation per year of service. That obligation applies whatever the size of the company or its sector.
In practice, many companies grant more than the statutory minimum, whether to strengthen their HR offer or to match what their sector does. Those extra days are a contractual benefit, not a general legal obligation.
The entitlement builds up as the working relationship runs. Employers therefore need to track each employee's available balance to keep absences and rest time under control.
Young employees are entitled to five weeks
Younger employees have a stronger entitlement. Art. 329a para. 1 of the Code of Obligations grants at least five weeks per year of service to employees up to the age of 20 completed years. Once an employee has passed that point, the four-week minimum applies.
The rule exists to guarantee enough rest to people starting out in working life. It also covers apprentices as far as the statutory minimum for young workers goes, subject to the specific rules of the apprenticeship contract.
As with other employees, a company can be more generous, but it has to meet the statutory duration as a floor.
Employers therefore need to factor in the employee's age when setting the annual entitlement, both when drawing up contracts and when tracking balances.
Calculating vacation for an incomplete year of service
Where the working relationship does not cover a full year of service, the entitlement is set in proportion to how long it lasted.
This applies in particular to:
- employees who start part-way through the year;
- employees who leave before the end of their year of service;
- fixed-term contracts.
Someone who starts part-way through the year does not automatically acquire their full annual entitlement: the number of days available is adjusted to the period worked.
When absence reduces the entitlement
A long absence can also cut the entitlement, and this is where employers most often get it wrong, because the rule is asymmetric.
Where the employee is prevented from working through their own fault for more than one month in total during a year of service, the employer may reduce the vacation by one twelfth per full month of absence.
Where the absence is through no fault of their own, for reasons inherent to their person such as illness, accident, performance of a legal obligation, holding public office or taking youth leave, the employer may not reduce the vacation at all as long as the absence does not exceed one month in the year of service. The first month is free, in other words, and only the months beyond it count.
Pregnancy has its own rule: no reduction may be applied where an employee is prevented from working for up to two months on that ground.
Tracking the prorata and any reduction precisely matters when someone joins or leaves, and after a long absence. Getting the balance wrong leads to administrative corrections or errors in payroll.
How is vacation organized in Switzerland?
Beyond the number of days, the law also governs how vacation is taken. The point is to make sure the employee actually gets a proper rest.
Organizing it means balancing what the employee wants against what the business needs.
Vacation has to include two consecutive weeks
As a rule, vacation is granted during the corresponding year of service, and it has to include at least two consecutive weeks.
Both halves of that rule matter. The two consecutive weeks stop vacation from being permanently broken into short spells that give no real rest. Taking it in the year it was earned is what stops balances from piling up indefinitely.
For employers, this means planning absences ahead and actively encouraging staff to use their entitlement. Managing balances is not just about counting available days: it is about making sure the employee can actually use their right to rest.
Who decides the dates?
In Switzerland, the employer sets the dates.
That decision cannot be arbitrary. The employer has to take the employee's wishes into account as far as this is compatible with the interests of the business.
Considerations can include:
- the company's busy periods;
- constraints on how teams are organized;
- the need for continuity of service.
Employees, for their part, need to make their wishes known early enough for planning to work.
Organizing vacation clearly limits the disruption absences cause while respecting the employee's right to rest, and it makes the administrative side easier to handle.
How is vacation paid in Switzerland?
Vacation is not a period during which the employee stops being paid. Since the point is to let them rest without their finances changing, the employer keeps paying the salary for that period.
What that salary comes to depends on the employee's usual remuneration, so employers have to account for every element that makes up their income.
Salary continues during vacation
During vacation, the employee is entitled to the full salary relating to that period.
The employer therefore pays what the employee would have earned had they worked. Vacation cannot cut anyone's income.
In practice, employers need to:
- keep paying salary through the vacation period;
- carry variable elements of remuneration in correctly where they form part of usual pay;
- handle vacation periods in line with the applicable payroll rules.
This covers every employee under Swiss employment law, full-time or part-time, with the entitlement and the salary adjusted to each situation.
Employees paid by the hour
Where pay varies with hours worked, salary cannot simply keep running during vacation, so the entitlement is expressed as a percentage of the wage. Four weeks of vacation come to 8.33 percent, five weeks to 10.64 percent, and six weeks to 13.04 percent. The arithmetic is straightforward: four weeks of vacation set against the 48 weeks actually worked, five weeks against 47.
How that amount is paid out is where employers need to be careful. The principle is that the salary relating to vacation is paid when the vacation is actually taken. Paying it out continuously, as a percentage added to each month's wage, was long tolerated as an exception for genuinely irregular work, provided the vacation share was stated expressly in the written contract and shown on every payslip.
That tolerance has narrowed. In a ruling of 30 January 2023, the Federal Supreme Court held that for full-time employment with a single employer, the practical difficulty of calculating vacation pay no longer justifies the exception, given the payroll and time-tracking software available today. Paying vacation pay with the base salary is no longer accepted in that situation.
Compensating benefits in kind during vacation
Some employees do not receive their remuneration in cash alone. They may also get benefits in kind tied to their work.
Where an employee normally receives part of their pay in that form, the employer has to provide fair compensation for it during the vacation period.
This can cover situations where the employee gets:
- accommodation provided by the employer;
- meals covered in a professional context;
- other benefits with an economic value.
The aim is to make sure vacation does not unjustifiably reduce the employee's overall remuneration. Handling these elements badly creates a gap between what the employee usually earns and what they are paid on vacation.
Can vacation be replaced by a cash payment?
Vacation exists first and foremost to give the employee genuine rest. That is why it cannot simply be swapped for money while the employment contract is still running.
Employer and employee are not free to agree between themselves to drop vacation days in exchange for a payment.
Vacation cannot be bought out during the contract
For as long as the working relationship lasts, vacation has to be taken as time off.
An employer cannot offer to pay for untaken days to avoid the employee being away. Equally, an employee cannot give up their right to rest just to earn more.
The prohibition rests on the idea that vacation has to let the employee recover physically and mentally. Its purpose is not financial.
Cash compensation can nevertheless come into play in specific situations, in particular where the contract ends and there is no longer time to take the remaining vacation before the employee leaves. Untaken days can then be compensated under the applicable rules.
Employers therefore have every reason to keep balances under review, so that a large number of days does not sit unused when a working relationship ends.
Working for a third party during vacation
Vacation is meant for rest. An employee cannot use the period to take on paid work that damages their employer's legitimate interests.
Where an employee works for a third party during their vacation in breach of their obligations, the employer has two options:
- refuse to pay the salary relating to the vacation days concerned;
- claim back the salary already paid for that period.
This mainly covers cases where the activity conflicts with the company's interests, for instance where it undermines the rest the employee needs or competes with the employer.
Setting clear rules on what employees may do during vacation, and telling them what is expected, is the simplest way to avoid the problem. Good communication protects what vacation is for: real rest, within a balanced working relationship.
Simplify vacation management with Numeriq Payroll
Managing vacation, much like paid public holidays in Switzerland, involves several administrative steps employers have to follow closely: calculating each employee's annual entitlement, tracking days taken and days left, keeping salary running during absences, and handling variable elements of remuneration correctly.
These obligations get harder for companies with several employees, with teams spread across different cantons, or that would rather focus on their core business than on payroll administration.
At Numeriq Payroll, we support Swiss companies, foreign companies employing staff in Switzerland and SMEs across their payroll obligations. Our team helps you build vacation management properly into your administrative processes and your payroll.
What we cover includes:
- tracking the vacation entitlement each employee has accrued;
- managing absences and leave balances;
- carrying vacation periods correctly into payroll;
- handling the elements of remuneration linked to absences;
- keeping the social security declarations compliant, including for the 13th salary in Switzerland.
By outsourcing payroll management in Switzerland to Numeriq Payroll, you get specialist support to simplify your administration and secure your processes, with a clear view of your salary data throughout.
Our multilingual team based in Switzerland already supports more than 100 companies and 1,000 contractors with payroll and administrative management. With over 50 years of combined experience, support available 24/7 and a payroll accuracy rate of 99.9 percent, we put our expertise behind reliable, transparent handling of employer obligations.
That lets you concentrate on growing your business while working with a partner who handles the day-to-day of your payroll and your social security obligations in Switzerland.
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