Work permit Vietnam rules just changed, and most employers haven

A work permit application that used to take five weeks now clears in ten working days. That single number captures how much changed under Decree 219/2025/ND-CP, which came into force in August 2025 and reshaped how foreign employees get authorized to work in Vietnam.

Plenty of HR teams are still operating off the old playbook. Old forms. Old timelines. Old assumptions about who needs a permit at all. None of that reflects where the rules actually stand now.

What Decree 219 actually changed

The reform replaced Decree 152/2020 and its 2023 amendment, and it didn't just tweak the edges. It rebuilt the process.

One application instead of two

Employers used to run a two-step sequence: first, register the demand to hire a foreign worker and wait for approval, then submit a separate work permit application. Decree 219 folds both into a single combined submission through the National Public Service Portal. Fewer forms, fewer waiting periods stacked on top of each other.

Faster processing across the board

Standard work permit processing dropped from roughly fifteen to twenty working days down to ten. The job posting period employers sometimes needed to satisfy fell from fifteen calendar days to five business days. Every stage moved faster, not just the headline number.

More ways to skip the permit entirely

The exemption list grew to around fifteen categories. Spouses of Vietnamese citizens now qualify explicitly, which wasn't spelled out clearly before. Capital contributors holding roughly 3 billion VND or more in a Vietnamese company can also qualify for exemption, along with specialists confirmed in priority sectors like finance, technology and digital transformation.

A simpler short-term rule

The old system allowed foreigners to work without a permit for up to 30 days per trip, capped at three trips a year. That's gone. The replacement is a single cumulative threshold: up to 90 days of work per calendar year, across however many entries it takes to get there. For companies running short consulting assignments or regional management visits, that flexibility is a real operational shift.

Everything now runs through one digital portal

Paper dossiers submitted in person used to be standard. Decree 219 pushes the whole workflow onto the National Public Service Portal, which speeds things up but also means employers need someone comfortable navigating a government digital system, not just a physical filing cabinet of documents. Companies that outsourced this to a local provider before the change are, in our experience, adapting faster than those still running it in-house without updated training.

A scenario that plays out constantly right now

A regional finance director based in Singapore used to fly into Vietnam for a handful of short visits each year, always careful to stay under the old 30-day, three-trip ceiling. Under the new cumulative rule, the same travel pattern barely registers as a compliance concern - the 90-day annual total gives far more breathing room, and the company no longer needs to track individual trip lengths quite so anxiously.

Contrast that with a manufacturing employer who assumed their long-time technical advisor, in Vietnam under an old-style short-term arrangement, was automatically covered by the new rules. They weren't. Exemption categories shifted enough that a case which qualified under the old decree needed re-confirmation under the new one - a step easy to miss when nobody rechecks status after a regulatory change.

Who still needs a permit, and who's genuinely exempt now

Most foreign employees working in a managerial, executive, expert or technical capacity still need a permit. That baseline hasn't moved. What's expanded is the list of exceptions sitting around it - representative office heads, certain intra-company transferees, education professionals confirmed by the Ministry of Education and Training, and the newly clarified spouse and capital-contributor categories mentioned above.

A useful habit for HR teams right now: treat every existing exemption on file as unconfirmed until it's been checked against Decree 219 specifically. Assumptions carried over from the old framework are exactly where gaps tend to show up.

What happens when a company gets this wrong

Employing a foreign national without a valid permit, or without confirmed exemption status, isn't a minor administrative slip. It exposes both the employer and the employee to penalties, and it can unravel related approvals - temporary residence cards, visas, even banking arrangements tied to that individual's status. Fixing it after the fact takes considerably longer than getting it right at the outset.

Immigration authorities have also grown more consistent about cross-checking work permit records against residence card and visa data. A gap that might have gone unnoticed a few years ago is more likely to surface now, sometimes at a routine renewal rather than a targeted inspection.

Building the update into your process

Reviewing every current foreign employee's status against the new decree is worth doing now, not at renewal time. For companies newer to Vietnam, this kind of compliance layer fits naturally alongside the broader process of Vietnam company formation, since hiring plans and licensing decisions usually get made together. For the full document checklist behind a standard application, our detailed work permit requirement guide walks through what to prepare.

The practical takeaway

Rules move fast in Vietnam, and this is one of the bigger shifts in years. A short internal audit now, checking every foreign hire's status against Decree 219, costs far less time than untangling a compliance gap later. LHD Law Firm tracks changes like this closely for clients across Ho Chi Minh City, Ha Noi and Da Nang, so a quick status check rarely takes long - and it beats discovering a gap during an inspection.