Leipzig, GermanyMonthly letter to members · 27 October 2026
Members,
October has been a month for taking stock. Our question is still practical: what makes a small employer hesitate before hiring their first person, and what could make that decision simpler and more predictable? We have not reached a final answer. We have, however, moved from a broad concern toward a clearer account of the problem—and we can see where the evidence remains thin.
What moved this month
On 13 October, we issued the interim pattern review on the cost of a first hire, RC/TM/2026/N.1. It found that two of the five required tests had been met. That is progress, not a verdict. Our process requires us to examine Volume, Frequency, Consistency, Spread and Corroboration before proposing a fix. We should not treat a strong impression as a substitute for evidence across all five.
On 26 October, I wrote to members about renaming TM-001 the Fair Hiring Cost Standard. The name puts the intended outcome in view: not a special favour for one kind of employer, but fairer, simpler conditions for taking on a first team member. The proposal remains focused on three practical changes: phased social contributions for a business’s first ten hires, one-stop payroll registration, and rules that small employers can predict before making a commitment.
Across the Assembly, Trade Council’s TR-001 passed its pattern test on 20 October and moved into drafting. The Fair Play consultation continues through 12 November. The Cashflow Council’s adoption ballot opened on 26 October and runs through 9 November. The Assembly’s Q3 and First Eight Months reports also give members a wider view of the work and participation to date. The point of these parallel efforts is not to make every council move at the same speed. It is to make sure that each proposal earns its way from reports to a test, from a test to a draft, and from a draft to a decision.
The numbers behind our work
As of 27 October, the Team Council has 123 members in 39 countries. Together, members have filed 178 Team Council reports, drawing on experiences in 43 countries. All 178 concern hiring costs. Twenty-three were filed in the last 30 days. The median amount at stake is approximately US$4,220.
The reports come from businesses at different stages. Thirty-nine per cent of reporting members describe themselves as working alone; 42 per cent have teams of 2–9; 16 per cent have 10–49; and 3 per cent have 50–249. Canada has contributed 27 reports, the United States 23, Germany 13, Italy 12 and the United Kingdom 10. Brazil, Mexico and India have contributed seven each. These figures help us see where evidence is coming from; they do not tell us that one country’s rules or one business’s circumstances stand for everyone.
For context, the OECD reports an average tax wedge of 35.1 per cent across OECD countries in 2025, with substantial differences between countries. That measure combines taxes and contributions around a worker’s pay; it is not a bill that every employer pays at the same rate. The ILO estimates that MSMEs account for about 70 per cent of employment worldwide and that around 80 per cent operate in the informal economy. Those broad figures underline why formal hiring matters, but they do not answer the specific questions our members are documenting.12
A story that shows the friction
To make the issue concrete, here is an anonymized composite built from the kinds of situations members report.
An owner who has been working alone is ready to bring in a first employee. The wage seems manageable. What is harder to settle is the full cost and the sequence: which registrations must come first, which contributions begin immediately, what payroll information is needed, and whether a missed step will create a penalty or a delay. The owner spends time piecing together answers from different places. The offer is put off—not because the work has disappeared, but because the cost and process are difficult to predict.
This is the kind of friction our proposal is meant to examine. A phased contribution schedule could make early hiring costs less abrupt. One-stop registration could reduce the number of places an employer must navigate. Clear, predictable rules could let an owner calculate the commitment before making an offer. Each idea needs careful design: simplification should not mean shifting avoidable risk onto workers or weakening protections.
What we are learning
First, “the cost of hiring” is not one number. Members are pointing to the total cost, the timing of payments, the work needed to comply, and uncertainty about what applies. We need evidence that distinguishes those problems rather than bundling them together.
Second, the first hire is a useful starting point, but it is not the whole story. Our evidence includes businesses with teams of different sizes. The proposed first-ten-hire focus needs to be tested against those different stages, and against differences between jurisdictions.
Third, evidence must be broad enough to support a standard. Two tests met means three still need work. More reports can help, but so can better detail about when costs arise, which steps are confusing, and what a workable remedy would change. A letter, a consultation or a public statistic cannot stand in for that member-level corroboration.
What comes next
The Fair Play consultation closes on 12 November, and the Cashflow adoption ballot closes on 9 November. On 17 November, letters are scheduled to go to the proposed Wave 2 platform CEO seats. These are Assembly-wide dates, not Team Council decisions, but they matter: our process depends on members seeing how evidence, consultation and adoption fit together.
For TM-001, the next work is to keep building the First Ten Hires cost diary and the employment-cost comparison. Please tell us what you paid, when you had to pay it, what took time to understand, and what change would have made the next step clearer. Where you can, separate the direct charge from the hours spent on registration and administration. That distinction may help us identify which parts of the problem a standard can realistically address.
Thank you to Mariam in Nairobi, Luca in Bologna and Ana in São Paulo for contributing to this month’s work and helping keep the discussion grounded in small employers’ decisions. And thank you to every member who filed a report, checked an assumption or asked us to be more precise. The figures are built from that effort.
We are not yet ready to claim that the case is complete. We are ready to keep doing the work, openly and carefully, so that a first hire can become a decision made with confidence rather than a process navigated in the dark.
With thanks,
Nikola Jurić
Chair, Team Council
Leipzig, Germany