Letter from the table: The first hire is a payroll system, not just a person

RC/TM/2026/T.23 · 16 September 2026

To the Team Council

I support the First Ten Hires proposal. I am writing from İzmir, where the question I hear from owners is often not whether they need help, but whether they can carry the full, recurring cost and the administrative responsibility of hiring someone formally.

On 2 June this year, I decided to find out what hiring my first employee would actually require. I had been putting the decision off. I did not want to rely on a rough guess, so I asked an accountant to work through the numbers with me. We used a proposed monthly gross wage of 38,000 Turkish lira. The estimate for direct monthly payroll cost came to roughly 46,500–47,500 lira, depending on which employer contribution relief I qualified for. That was before any equipment, training, or time spent arranging the work.

The uncertainty was not only the total. It was the difference between the amount I could promise and the amount I would have to keep ready. I needed to know whether an incentive applied, what conditions came with it, and what would happen if I misunderstood a filing or payment deadline. A saving that depends on eligibility and timely compliance cannot be treated as money already in the bank.

On 8 June, I asked the accountant to take me through the steps as well as the estimate. The first-hire process was not one form. We discussed registering the workplace with the Social Security Institution (SGK), setting up access for electronic declarations, and filing the employee’s işe giriş

bildirgesi before the employee began work. Each month would then bring payroll records, social-security premiums and a Muhtasar ve Prim Hizmet Beyannamesi, the combined withholding and premium-service declaration submitted through the tax administration’s system. The employer remains responsible for getting the details right, even when an accountant prepares the paperwork.

I tried to make a simple one-page checklist: what must be done before the start date, what must be filed each month, what must be paid, and which documents I should retain. I also asked whether I could complete the registration myself. The answer was that some steps can be handled electronically, but I still needed to understand which account, authorization and workplace details were required. I did not want to discover a missing step on the employee’s first morning.

By 22 June, I had a more dependable estimate and a clearer sequence. I chose a start date of 1 July and made sure the entry notification was handled before that date. I hired. I am glad I did. But I would be misleading the Council if I described the decision as a simple calculation. It took several conversations, and the final estimate still depended on rules and conditions that I had to ask someone else to interpret.

That experience is familiar in conversations with owners around me. The details differ: one is considering a first assistant, another a second person to share the workload, another a seasonal hire. What they have in common is that the first employee makes a business responsible for a regular payroll, formal registration and a sequence of obligations. Some owners can absorb that transition. Others delay, keep doing the work themselves, or rely on arrangements that offer less security to the worker. That is not a judgment about their intentions; it is what happens when the first step feels costly and difficult to reverse.

The proposed standard should not remove social protection or make workers bear the cost of a business’s uncertainty. It should make formal hiring easier to begin and easier to administer. I support phased social contributions for a business’s first ten hires, with clear rules about how

support changes as the team grows. I also support one-stop payroll registration: one guided process that shows an employer what must be done, where it must be done, and by when. Predictable rules matter as much as a lower bill. A small employer should be able to estimate the full cost before agreeing a start date, without having to guess whether a relief will apply.

There should be safeguards. The process should not reward firms for repeatedly replacing workers, or create a cliff where the cost suddenly jumps after the tenth hire. The standard should explain how existing incentives interact with the proposed relief, and give employers a plain-language calculation they can check. If a business makes an honest administrative mistake, it should be clear how to correct it. Workers’ registration and contributions must remain visible and protected.