Occupational safety and health in Vietnam

What are an employer's occupational safety and health duties in Vietnam?

An employer in Vietnam must provide a safe, healthy workplace and manage the risks in it — this is a statutory duty under the Law on Occupational Safety and Health 84/2015, not a matter of good practice. In short, you must keep the workplace within the legal technical limits for hazards such as dust, hazardous gases, radiation, noise and vibration and measure them regularly; run and maintain machinery and equipment to the OSH technical regulations; supply adequate personal protective equipment; assess the dangerous and hazardous factors in the workplace at least once a year, or when necessary, and act on what the assessment finds; inspect and maintain workshops and stores; post safety warning and instruction signs in Vietnamese; inform, communicate and train staff on OSH; and keep an incident-response and emergency-rescue plan ready.1

These duties fall on whoever is the legal employer. If you hire through your own Vietnamese entity, they are yours to run; if you hire through an employer of record, the EOR carries them as the employer on record. Either way they sit inside the broader set of employment obligations — see Vietnam labour law and employment contracts for where workplace safety fits alongside the contract, working-hours and discipline rules.

Is safety training mandatory in Vietnam, and who must be trained?

Yes. Occupational-safety-and-health training is compulsory, and the duty is broad: it reaches managers, dedicated safety officers, medical staff, the workplace safety-and-hygiene network, workers in jobs with strict OSH requirements and ordinary workers — including apprentices, trainees and probationers.1 The implementing decree, Decree 44/2016/ND-CP, splits the workforce into six training groups, each with its own minimum training time, content and periodic refresher requirement; a worker generally cannot start a job with strict OSH requirements until they hold the right certificate.2

What must be reported when there is a workplace accident?

An occupational accident must be declared, investigated and reported, and the serious cases move fast. An employer must notify the competent authority immediately when an accident causes the death of an employee or serious injury to two or more employees; fatal cases are also notified to the police. The employer then forms an investigation team, compiles statistics on occupational accidents, and files the periodic occupational-accident report — biannually and annually.13

The annual occupational-accident report is due before 10 January of the following year to the provincial labour state-management authority — the function now sits with the Department of Home Affairs after Vietnam's 2025 reorganisation. Reporting is not optional even in a clean year: a nil return is still filed.3

When is the annual OSH report due in Vietnam?

Before 10 January. Each year an employer files an annual occupational-safety-and-health report, for the preceding year, with the provincial labour authority (now the Department of Home Affairs) and the Department of Health. A parallel annual occupational-health report — covering the year's periodic health checks and working-environment monitoring — goes to the local health authority on the same 10 January deadline. These are management reports, separate from the monthly payroll and insurance filings.4

Three January reports therefore land together, and missing them is a common, avoidable breach. The Vietnam HR compliance calendar gathers every recurring filing deadline in one place so the 10 January reports are not overlooked alongside the payroll and social-insurance cut-offs.

What is occupational-accident insurance in Vietnam?

Occupational-accident and disease insurance (OADI) is the fund that pays compensation and medical costs when a worker is injured or made ill by the job. It is not a separate payroll line: it sits inside the employer's 17.5% social-insurance contribution as a 0.5% element of the contribution salary, so an employer already funds it through ordinary social-insurance payments.5 For how that 17.5% breaks down against the rest of the on-cost, see social insurance in Vietnam and the full Vietnam payroll and employer costs breakdown.

Safety performance has a direct price here. The 0.5% rate can fall to 0.3% for an employer that meets the occupational-safety criteria and has a clean recent record — broadly, no administrative penalty for OSH or related violations in the three years up to the application — typically granted for a 36-month period under Decree 58/2020/ND-CP (as of October 2026). So the duties above are not only compliance: a good safety record lowers a real, recurring payroll cost.5

What are the penalties for OSH breaches, and what changed in 2026?

Occupational-safety-and-health breaches are administrative violations with cash fines, and the governing instrument changed in 2026. From 10 September 2026, labour and social-insurance penalties are set by Decree 283/2026/ND-CP, which replaced Decree 12/2022/ND-CP; any page still citing Decree 12/2022 as the live basis is out of date. OSH fines are typically assessed per affected employee and, under the general rule in Article 7, the amounts for an organisation are double those for an individual, subject to overall caps.6

The clearest worked figure — the fine for not running the mandatory health check — is set out on the employee health checks in Vietnam page, which this guide deliberately leaves to it. Separately, Vietnam is drafting an amended Occupational Safety and Health Law to align the regime with its 2024 social-insurance and data laws and with ILO Conventions 155 and 187. As of October 2026 that amendment is still a proposal, so Law 84/2015 remains the governing OSH statute and the duties on this page are unchanged.6

How does this connect to the mandatory health check?

The periodic employee health check is the part of this regime that touches every worker in every office, so it has its own page. It is an employer-paid examination at least once a year — more often for hazardous roles and more vulnerable workers — and skipping it carries its own fine. Rather than restate it here, see mandatory employee health checks in Vietnam for frequency, who pays and the penalty, and sick leave in Vietnam for what happens when a check or an occupational illness stops someone working. For the wider set of employer duties beyond safety, browse the Vietnam employer guides.

How EOR Vietnam carries these OSH duties for your hire

When EOR Vietnam is the legal employer of your Vietnamese team, the occupational-safety-and-health duties on this page are ours to run as the employer on record. We arrange the group-appropriate OSH training, keep the risk assessment and health records current, handle occupational-accident declaration and investigation if an incident occurs, and file the annual OSH, accident and occupational-health reports on the 10 January deadline. The OADI contribution is remitted as part of the ordinary 17.5% social insurance, and where a clean safety record qualifies for the reduced 0.3% rate, that saving flows through to the employment cost rather than to our fee.

One limit is worth naming. As the legal employer we carry the duties that attach to that status — training, the risk-assessment and health records, accident declaration, the statutory reports and the insurance — but we do not control the physical place where the work actually happens. Where your hire works on your own site or from home, the day-to-day safe conditions, equipment and hazard controls there rest with whoever runs that workplace, so we agree up front how site safety and incident reporting are handled between us. That split matters most for on-site or hazardous roles; for ordinary office and remote work it is straightforward. How these safety duties apply to a home-based or fully remote team is set out in remote work and telework in Vietnam.

Our service is a flat US$149 per employee per month for a Vietnamese national — the same whatever the salary, role, location or headcount — with no setup, onboarding, offboarding, contract or payslip fees and no hidden fees (as of October 2026). Salary, the statutory employer contributions and any statutory or agreed employment payments are passed through at cost; the OSH obligations above are carried as part of being the employer, not billed as extras. A foreign national who needs a Vietnamese work permit is quoted separately. A refundable security deposit equal to two months of the employee's employment cost — gross salary plus the statutory employer contributions — is held for the duration of the engagement and returned at the end, less any unpaid amounts. For the full price and what it includes, see EOR Vietnam cost, or request a costed quote.