The Swiss Arbeitszeugnis

Why a document exists here that your home country may not have

In much of the world a reference is a phone call: a hiring manager rings your last boss and forms an impression that never gets written down. Swiss law took the opposite route and made the assessment a document the employee owns. Once the assessment has to be written, signed and handed over, it stops being gossip and starts being evidence — evidence you carry with you, can copy, and can attach to an application years later.

That single design decision explains most of what puzzles newcomers about applying here. A Swiss application file is heavy because part of it is not written by the applicant: the references are the outside voice in a folder that is otherwise entirely yours. It also explains why a missing period reads as a question rather than an oversight. If every completed job produces a document by law, a gap in the stack invites the reader to ask what happened there.

The practical consequence for anyone arriving from abroad is that the folder cannot be reconstructed later from Switzerland. A former employer in another country is under no Swiss obligation, and the further away the job recedes the harder the request becomes. What you can do is ask, in writing, while the relationship is fresh — and for Swiss jobs, use the entitlement early rather than at the moment you need it.

What "at any time" covers, and how long the claim lasts

The phrase does two jobs. Looking forward, it means the reference is available during an ongoing employment relationship — which is why an interim reference is a normal request rather than a signal of disloyalty. Looking backward, it means the entitlement did not expire on your last working day.

SECO puts a number on the backward reach: the prescription period is ten years and it starts running from the end of the employment relationship. That number is not in Art. 330a itself — the article says nothing about time limits. It follows the general rule of Art. 127 CO, under which all claims prescribe after ten years unless federal civil law provides otherwise.

Ten years is long enough to cover an entire early career, but it is a limit rather than a promise. Companies are restructured, sold and dissolved; the manager who could describe your work moves on. The legal window stays open far longer than the practical one, and that difference is the argument for collecting each reference as the job ends rather than when a new application needs it.

What a reference has to look like — and the myth about codes

SECO splits its requirements into formal and substantive. Formally, a reference is typed, normally a clean computer printout on ordinary good-quality paper; it has to be linguistically correct in the sense of clarity, intelligibility and correct spelling; and it has to convey an orderly impression, with no crossings-out. These read as trivia until you remember the document is meant to be read by strangers years after it was written.

Substantively, value judgments have to rest on the usual standards, and the content is limited to what is necessary to assess performance and conduct — statements about matters with no direct connection to the employment relationship are inadmissible. Negative facts may be mentioned where they matter to the overall assessment, which excludes completely isolated incidents and unimportant details.

Then there is the belief that Swiss references are written in a secret code. SECO addresses it directly, naming among the substantive conditions the inadmissibility of ambiguous formulations and of the use of reference codes, in which superficially neutral or positive wording carries a negative message for those in the know. In other words the coded phrase is not the accepted convention of the system; the federal authority describes it as something a reference is not allowed to do.

One document, four reading languages

A reference is written in the language of the company that issued it. It is read in the language of the company you are applying to, and in Switzerland those are routinely different. Among the live adverts in our index whose language is unambiguous, 57.1 per cent are written in German, 27.1 per cent in English, 13.5 per cent in French and 2.2 per cent in Italian.

The switch happens inside single employers too. In our index 14.3 per cent of employers advertise in more than one of those four languages and 3.1 per cent in at least three; because those tend to be the larger employers, 40.7 per cent of all adverts come from a company that advertises multilingually. An English-speaking recruiter reading a German reference is an ordinary Tuesday here, not an edge case.

The law is silent on language: Art. 330a CO gives no right to a reference in a language of your choosing, and there is no statutory duty to translate. What travels well instead is context — the original attached as issued, and the function, dates and scope restated in the language of the application in your CV. For a question about one specific reference, the cantonal conciliation authorities for employment disputes and legal advice services are the right address, not a general explainer.

'Bad' is four different documents, and only three of them are defective

People who find their reference bad are usually holding one of four documents. The first contains something that is not true: a wrong job title, a wrong duration, an assessment resting on something that did not happen that way. The second leaves out something that belongs in it — SECO's own illustration of completeness is that the assessment of conduct may not be omitted.

The third says two things at once. That is precisely the case SECO calls inadmissible: ambiguous wording and reference codes, in which apparently neutral or positive formulations deliver negative messages to insiders. Whoever holds such a document does not have a communication problem; they have a reference that fails one of the substantive requirements the supervisory authority sets out.

The fourth document is the uncomfortable one, because nothing is wrong with it: it judges accurately and still does not flatter. SECO's list expressly leaves room for that — value judgements are to be based on the usual standards, and negative facts may be mentioned where they are material to the overall assessment. Someone who does not separate the four ends up arguing about tone where the requirements speak about truth, completeness and clarity.

What Art. 330a CO owes you, and what it does not

The statutory text is short: the employee may at any time request from the employer a reference concerning the nature and the duration of the employment relationship, the quality of his work and his conduct. What is owed is a statement on those four points. A particular grade, a particular turn of phrase or a closing formula of your choosing does not appear in the article.

That is why a dispute over a reference is rarely a dispute over adjectives. The yardsticks a reference can be measured against are the formal and substantive requirements SECO sets out — truth, benevolence within truth, completeness, restriction to what is necessary for the assessment, usual standards for value judgements, no ambiguity. That is a different test from whether the document pleases its subject.

The article also says nothing about timing. 'At any time' ties the entitlement neither to the end of the job nor to any deadline in the statutory text. SECO puts the prescription period at ten years, running from the end of the employment relationship. The entitlement therefore outlives the job by years, and a reference whose defects only become apparent months later is not out of time for that reason.

The route the Civil Procedure Code sets out

Where no agreement with the employer is reached, the road does not lead straight to a courtroom. Under Art. 197 CPC, litigation is preceded by an attempt at conciliation before a conciliation authority. Federal law does not say which authority: Art. 3 CPC places the organisation of the courts and the conciliation authorities in the competence of the cantons unless the law provides otherwise. The body therefore has a different name from canton to canton, and sits in some places with a dedicated labour court and in others with a general conciliation authority.

What is federal is the cost. Art. 113 para. 2 lit. d CPC provides that no court costs are charged in conciliation proceedings for disputes relating to an employment contract up to a value in dispute of CHF 30'000; Art. 114 lit. c CPC repeats this for the litigation proceedings. Under Art. 243 para. 1 CPC, simplified proceedings apply to financial disputes up to that value in dispute, and Art. 247 CPC obliges the court, by asking the appropriate questions, to cause the parties to complete inadequate submissions and to indicate the evidence.

The place is in the statute too. Under Art. 34 para. 1 CPC, the court at the domicile or registered office of the defendant, or where the employee normally carries out his or her work, has jurisdiction over actions relating to employment law. None of these provisions says how a particular dispute ends — SECO prefaces its guidance with the reminder that in a dispute only the civil court decides.

The option written into the statute itself: paragraph 2

Art. 330a CO contains a second version of the reference that is regularly overlooked in this question. Paragraph 2 reads: at the employee's express request, the reference must be limited to the nature and duration of the employment relationship. SECO calls this version the partial reference or confirmation of employment, and distinguishes it from the full reference under paragraph 1, which also speaks to performance and conduct.

By the wording, the choice belongs to the employee: it takes an express request, otherwise the assessing version is what is owed. Someone unhappy with the assessment therefore does not face only the choice between accepting it and fighting it — the same provision that establishes the full reference also provides for a version without an assessment.

What that means for a dossier is decided by the reader, not by the statute. A confirmation of employment is visibly shorter than a full reference and does not answer two of the four points Art. 330a para. 1 CO lists. It is neither a blemish nor a substitute for a good reference, but a different way of satisfying the same entitlement, provided for in the law.

How much time the market allows

A dispute over a reference usually takes longer than an application. That is exactly why it is worth knowing how long the adverts it runs against stay open. In our index, 36.4 per cent of active adverts are at most 14 days old — but 41.5 per cent have been posted for at least 30 days, and 16.4 per cent for more than 90. As at 23 August 2026.

The market therefore splits into two halves moving at very different speeds. The fresh half is gone before a conciliation hearing is scheduled; the other half stays open long enough for a corrected document to reach it. That is not a recommendation but an order of magnitude: knowing which part of the market matters to you is what makes the question 'is this worth pursuing now' answerable at all.

Then there is the deadline. Because SECO puts prescription at ten years from the end of the employment relationship, the entitlement itself is not urgent — unlike the application you need it for. That asymmetry is the real reason a dispute over a reference and an active job search run on two different clocks.

The part of the dossier that is yours

A reference is the part of an application somebody else wrote. The CV is the part you write — and in a Swiss dossier it is read first. That is the practical reason why some of the attention an unresolved reference absorbs is better spent where the effect is immediate and the authorship undivided.

Who does the reading is rarely a matter of chance. In our index, employers with more than 20 open adverts hold 53.3 per cent of all active adverts while making up only 5.1 per cent of employers; the ten largest employers together account for 21.5 per cent. More than half of the adverts are therefore posted by organisations that screen application dossiers routinely and in volume.

The other side of the same picture: 45.4 per cent of the employers in our index have exactly one advert open, and together they account for 7.0 per cent of the active adverts. There, the person reading is often the person filling the job. Both are real reader profiles for the same reference — and both read the CV first.

The verb the whole claim hangs on

Art. 330a para. 1 CO describes a power, not an automatic duty: the employee may at any time request a reference. Read closely, the sentence carries three things. The claim presupposes a request. It is not tied to a moment — ‘at any time’ stands there without qualification. And the article says nothing about how the request must be made: no writing requirement, no form, no reasons to be given.

The counter-example sits a few pages later in the same statute. For apprenticeships, Art. 346a para. 1 CO says that at the end of the apprenticeship the employer must provide the apprentice with a certificate setting out the requisite information about the vocational training acquired and the duration of the apprenticeship. There, the issuing itself is owed; only the assessment of skills, achievements and conduct depends on a request under paragraph 2. The legislature knew both constructions and chose the other one for the employment reference.

For anyone who left months ago and never received anything, that is reassuring in an unglamorous way: this is not an edge case, it is the ordinary operation of the article. SECO names the two forms the same claim takes — the interim reference during employment and the final reference at its end — and both come into existence the same way.

Who still owes it when the company you worked for has changed

Because SECO puts the prescriptive period at ten years from the end of the employment relationship, the open question is rarely ‘am I too late’ and usually ‘whom do I write to’. The Code answers it for the two commonest cases. Under Art. 333 para. 1 CO, where the employer transfers the company or a part of it to a third party, the employment relationship and all attendant rights and obligations pass to the acquirer as of the day of the transfer. Under Art. 338a para. 1 CO, on the death of the employer the relationship passes to his heirs, with the business-transfer provisions applying mutatis mutandis.

Both provisions speak of the relationship as a whole rather than of individual salary items. So an employer that has since been sold does not leave a claim without a counterparty. If the entity itself has become hard to find, the place to look is the commercial register, which is publicly searchable across the cantons.

The third case is the public sector. SECO prefaces its answers by saying that they do not apply, or apply only to a limited extent, to public-law employment relationships, in particular in the administration or in state-owned enterprises. If you worked for a cantonal administration, a city or a federal office, the governing rule is in that body's personnel law, not in Art. 330a CO. In our own index, 4.3 per cent of active adverts come from employers that identify themselves in their name as public administration.

The name on the advert is not always the name on the reference

This matters most to people who arrived in Switzerland through an agency. In our index, 83.5 per cent of active adverts are posted under the name of the organisation where the work happens; 12.2 per cent carry the name of a placement, staffing or recruitment firm, with the single largest such name accounting for 10.7 percentage points of that. As at 23 August 2026.

In staff leasing the distinction is decisive. Art. 19 para. 1 AVG requires the hirer-out to conclude the contract with the worker in writing as a rule — the contracting party, and therefore the employer for the purposes of Art. 330a CO, is the agency rather than the company where the shifts were worked. Art. 18 para. 1 AVG additionally obliges the hirer-out to advertise vacancies under its own name with its exact address, and to state clearly in the advert that the worker will be engaged for staff leasing.

Straight placement is the mirror image: there the advert leads to an employment contract with the company itself, and that company owes the reference. If you can no longer remember which of the two arrangements applied, the contract and the payslip settle it. What counts is who is named there as the contracting party, not whose logo was on the building.

Due at once, and owed where the employer sits

Since Art. 330a CO names no deadline, the general part of the Code applies. Art. 75 CO: where no time of performance is stated in the contract or evident from the nature of the legal relationship, the obligation may be discharged or called in immediately. A claim without an agreed date is therefore not due eventually but at once, as soon as it is made. That is what a dated request is worth — it turns an unspecific wish into a due obligation.

Place is governed by Art. 74 CO. Paragraph 1 looks to the express or implied intention of the parties; where nothing else is provided, paragraph 2 no. 3 says other obligations must be discharged where the obligor was resident when they arose. The request travels to the employer's seat, not the other way around.

On dating, SECO records the market practice: a full reference bears the employer's legally valid signature together with the date of issue, and is normally dated the last day of the employment relationship. A reference written years afterwards is not a different document for that reason; it describes the same period from further away.

When nothing arrives: what the Code attaches to silence

For a due obligation that goes unperformed, the statute sets a sequence. Art. 102 para. 1 CO: where an obligation is due, the obligor is in default as soon as he receives a formal reminder from the obligee. The reminder is not an outburst, it is a legal act — which is why one dated letter setting a clear deadline does more than five friendly nudges.

What default triggers is in Art. 103 para. 1 CO: an obligor in default is liable in damages for late performance. Paragraph 2 lets him discharge himself by proving that the default occurred through no fault of his own. Default interest under Art. 104 CO does not enter into it — that provision speaks expressly of the payment of a pecuniary debt, and a reference is not one.

If silence persists, the route ends before a state body, and federal law does not say which one. Art. 3 of the Civil Procedure Code leaves the organisation of the courts and the conciliation authorities to the cantons unless the law provides otherwise, which is why the competent office has a different name depending on where you live. It is also why SECO's guidance opens by saying that in a dispute only the civil court decides: none of these provisions says how a particular claim will end.

What an exit agreement cannot settle along the way

An amicable departure often comes with a document declaring all mutual claims settled. Whether that also settles the reference is a question for two articles. Art. 341 para. 1 CO: for the period of the employment relationship and for one month after its end, the employee may not waive claims arising from mandatory provisions of law or of a collective employment contract.

Art. 362 CO then lists which provisions are mandatory in that sense. The list of articles from which no derogation to the employee's detriment is permissible — by individual agreement, standard employment contract or collective employment contract — expressly includes Art. 330a, the reference. Paragraph 2 declares deviating agreements void. What follows from that for a particular document is for the civil court to judge in a dispute; the two articles say which category the question belongs to.

It is also the reason not to postpone the request indefinitely. Not because a deadline is closing — ten years is a long time — but because the people who could write the text move on. What you control in the meantime is the other half of a Swiss application: the document you write yourself, and how readably it presents the same years the reference describes.

When you can ask for an interim reference

Under CO art. 330a the entitlement exists where there is a legitimate interest — no notice of termination and no minimum tenure is needed. The employer may ask what for, but may not simply refuse. As of 7 September 2026.

The whole answer sits in one word

Swiss employment law is written sparely, and Art. 330a para. 1 CO is a good example. It ties the entitlement to no calendar date, no length of service and no event. The word is "at any time", and it stands there without qualification or a list of exceptions. So the legal half of the question is short, and the real work lies elsewhere: not in when you may ask, but in what a reference about an unfinished stretch of work can meaningfully say.

That silence has a corollary worth naming. The article contains no closed list of valid occasions, no minimum interval between two references and no obligation to explain yourself. Any online list of "acceptable reasons" for an interim reference is therefore a description of practice, not a restatement of the statute — a distinction worth holding on to if someone quotes such a list back at you.

The drafters knew how to impose a condition when they wanted one. Paragraph 2 of the very same article makes a narrower version of the document conditional on the employee’s "express request". Where a requirement was intended, it is written down. Paragraph 1 has none.

Probation and notice periods are inside the word "during"

Two stretches of an employment relationship are routinely treated as special cases and are not. The first is probation. Art. 335b CO defines the probation period as the first month of an employment relationship, terminable on seven days’ notice, and allows a written agreement, a standard employment contract or a collective agreement to depart from that — with a ceiling of three months. Nothing in that article, and nothing in Art. 330a CO, carves probation out of the reference entitlement.

The second is a notice period that has already started. Art. 335c para. 1 CO sets it at one month in the first year of service, two months from the second to the ninth year, and three months after that, always expiring at the end of a calendar month. Between the day notice is given and the last working day, the statute therefore builds in one to three months in which the employment relationship continues unchanged. That is exactly the window SECO describes as "during the employment relationship".

Whether a document issued in that window ends up being called an interim or a final reference is a question of labelling and of the period it covers, not of entitlement. SECO notes on dating that a full reference normally carries the date of the last day of the employment relationship; an interim one, by its nature, is dated earlier.

What has to be in it — and where SECO’s list assumes a finished job

SECO lists five things a full reference should contain: the identity of employee and employer; the start and end of the employment relationship; a detailed list of the important functions and the activities that characterised the relationship, with their duration; a meaningful assessment of performance — quality and quantity of work — and of conduct; and the employer’s legally valid signature with the date of issue. One item cannot be met by an interim reference: an end date that has not happened yet cannot be stated. That is a property of a list written for the document issued at the end, not a defect in the interim one.

The remaining requirements do not depend on timing. Formally, SECO asks for typed text, normally clean computer printing on good-quality paper, linguistic correctness, and a tidy impression without crossings-out. Substantively: customary standards for value judgements, completeness — the assessment of conduct may not simply be left out — a restriction to what is necessary to judge performance and conduct, truthful statements, and benevolent wording that does not breach the duty of truthfulness.

SECO also names the practice that this rules out: ambiguous formulations and coded phrasing, where wording that looks neutral or positive carries a negative message to those who know the convention, are not permissible. This is where a Swiss reference differs most sharply from the American reference letter or the LinkedIn recommendation an arriving candidate may be used to. The Swiss document is an assessment the employer owes you, subject to standards, not a favour someone chooses to grant.

The other option in the same article: the partial reference

Art. 330a para. 2 CO states that at the employee’s express request the reference must be limited to the nature and duration of the employment relationship. SECO calls this the partial reference or Arbeitsbestätigung and contrasts it with the full reference under paragraph 1, which also reports on performance and conduct.

For a timing question this matters because two different documents are available, and both of them at any moment. The difference lies in scope rather than in date: one evaluates, the other merely confirms. A short stretch confirmed rather than assessed produces a document with limited reach by design — sometimes precisely the point.

The sequence is worth noting. Paragraph 2 requires an express request; without one, the full reference under paragraph 1 is the statutory default, not the exception. In practice, an employee who asks vaguely may be handed a confirmation of dates. The article says which of the two you get depends on what you ask for.

Why this surprises people arriving from Germany or France

If you have worked in the EU before moving to Switzerland — or if you commute across the border as a frontalier — the moment is set differently in the law you know. Germany’s Gewerbeordnung, § 109 para. 1, grants the entitlement to a written reference "on termination of an employment relationship", and then distinguishes a simple reference covering the nature and duration of the work from a qualified one extending to performance and conduct. An ongoing employment relationship is not what that provision addresses.

France is built the same way. Art. L1234-19 of the Code du travail provides that on expiry of the employment contract the employer issues the employee a certificate whose content is determined by regulation. Again the trigger is the end of the contract.

The Swiss difference is not a nuance of wording but a different trigger altogether: the neighbouring systems attach the document to an event, Swiss law attaches it to a request. If you carry a habit of waiting for the end, that habit comes from a rule that genuinely exists — just not here.

Federal, cantonal and communal jobs follow their own staff law

SECO states at the top of its guidance that the answers concern private-law employment contracts and do not apply, or apply only in part, to public-law employment relationships, particularly in the administration or in state-owned enterprises. In a country where public bodies employ teachers, hospital staff and administrative personnel at three levels of government, that caveat covers a great many people.

For the Confederation the bridge can at least be named precisely. Art. 6 para. 2 of the Federal Personnel Act provides that the relevant provisions of the Code of Obligations apply by analogy to the employment relationship, unless that Act or other federal legislation provides otherwise. Paragraph 3 adds that implementing provisions — in particular the collective agreement — and the employment contract regulate the relationship in more detail within that frame, and paragraph 4 gives precedence to whichever provision is more favourable to the employee where they conflict.

For cantons and communes there is no equivalent federal sentence, because staff law at that level is cantonal. Someone employed by a cantonal administration, a city, a hospital or a school finds the governing rule in that body’s own staff regulations — and whether an interim reference is provided for as broadly as in Art. 330a CO is decided there, not by the CO. This is the ordinary pattern in Swiss employment questions rather than an exception to it.

The most-cited occasion, and why it need not be one

The occasion advice pages put first is a change of line manager: the person who can judge your work leaves, and with them the memory of what you did in those years. How often that happens cannot be measured directly. How much of the advertised market consists of leadership roles can be: 7.8 per cent of the live adverts in our index carry an unambiguous leadership word in the title, and a further 7.2 per cent call the role "Manager" without the title showing whether anyone is supervised. As at 28 August 2026.

Every one of those roles, once filled, is a change for a team at the point where references are later written or countersigned. The legal point of this question, though, is that none of it needs to be established. Because Art. 330a para. 1 CO attaches to no occasion, nobody has to evidence one — which removes the passage people find hardest to write, the explanation of why they are asking now.

What the reference cannot do is speak for you. It is the employer’s account, in the employer’s language and format; the CV is yours, and in a Swiss dossier the two are read together with the Arbeitszeugnisse attached. Yours is also the part that does not wait for anyone else’s signature.

Interim and final reference compared

Both are full references under CO art. 330a and assess performance and conduct. The difference is timing, not scope.

Why this question barely exists in some countries and is routine here

If you are arriving from the UK, the starting point is unfamiliar. GOV.UK states plainly that an employer does not usually have to give a work reference, that a reference is required only where there was a written agreement to do so or the employer is in a regulated industry such as financial services, and that where one is given it may be brief — job title, salary and when you were employed. A written assessment of how well you did the work is not something the law makes anyone produce.

Switzerland starts from the opposite end. Art. 330a CO gives every employee a claim to a reference that speaks to the nature and duration of the employment and to the quality of the work and the conduct — and gives it at any time, not only on departure. That single phrase is what makes an interim reference an ordinary request here rather than an awkward one, and it is why a Swiss Bewerbungsdossier, the application file, is expected to contain references for jobs you have not yet left.

For someone relocating, the practical consequence sits in the application file rather than in the law. A stack of references that stops at your previous employer leaves the current job undocumented, and a Swiss reader treats that gap as a question. The interim reference is the instrument the system provides for closing it while the job is still running.

Two axes, four possible documents

SECO answers two distinct questions in two distinct places, and in everyday use they get stirred together. The first is when the document is issued: as a Zwischenzeugnis during the employment relationship, or as a Schlusszeugnis at its end. The second is how much it says: the full reference under Art. 330a paragraph 1 covers the nature and duration of the employment as well as performance and conduct, while the partial reference or work confirmation under paragraph 2 is limited to duration and nature.

Cross the two axes and you get four combinations — an assessing interim reference, a work confirmation issued mid-employment, an assessing final reference, and a bare confirmation at the end. All four discharge the same claim. Which one is issued turns, on the wording of paragraph 2, on the employee's express request rather than on the moment.

So the label tells you less than it seems to. Zwischenzeugnis says nothing about how much is written; Schlusszeugnis says nothing about whether it assesses. A short document is a paragraph-2 matter, not a timing matter, and the two are governed by different sentences of the same article.

What actually distinguishes them on the page

The visible difference is a date. SECO counts the start and end of the employment relationship among the content a full reference should carry, along with the employer's legally valid signature and the date of issue — adding that the reference is normally dated the last day of the employment relationship. A document written mid-employment can satisfy neither point: there is no end to record, and its date of issue is simply the day it was typed.

That is how an interim reference is recognised in a stack. It describes an open period running from a start date to the day of issue, and it carries a signature given while the relationship was still live. The final reference closes the same period and names both ends of it.

Two further markers are frequently quoted as rules and are in fact convention rather than law: that an interim reference is written in the present tense, and that it omits the closing paragraph of thanks and good wishes. Neither the statute nor SECO's guidance mentions either. What SECO does say about language applies to every reference equally — clarity, intelligibility, correct spelling, and no ambiguous wording or coded phrases carrying a hidden message.

The handover: notice period, due date, prescription

Between notice and the last working day lies a stretch in which the employment relationship legally continues. Art. 335c paragraph 1 CO measures it, as the statutory default, at one month in the first year of service, two months from the second to the ninth, and three months thereafter, expiring at the end of a calendar month; paragraph 2 permits variation by written individual, standard or collective contract, though a period shorter than one month only by collective contract and only in the first year. Anyone handed a reference during that stretch is handed an interim one, because nothing has ended yet.

At the end, the position changes. Art. 339 paragraph 1 CO provides that when the employment relationship ends, all claims arising from it fall due; and SECO names the same moment as the start of the limitation period, which is ten years running from the end of the employment relationship. An interim reference obtained earlier neither starts that clock nor uses up the claim.

For anyone whose Swiss job is not their first, that matters more than it sounds. A reference obtained in year three of a ten-year job stays valid evidence for the years it covers, and it exists independently of whatever is written a decade later by people who were not there at the time.

Why interim references exist in a market shaped like this one

The usual occasion is not a job search but a change inside the organisation: a new line manager, a merged department, a different function. How common such shifts are can be read off the shape of the employer base. In our index, 47.3 per cent of active adverts come from the 5.1 per cent of employers advertising twenty or more roles at once, and a further 29.7 per cent from those with five to nineteen open; staffing and recruitment intermediaries are excluded from that count. Roughly three quarters of adverts therefore come from organisations hiring at scale — and where hiring is continuous, so is reorganisation.

The mirror image is just as Swiss. 46.4 per cent of the employers in our index are advertising exactly one role, and together they account for 8.4 per cent of adverts. In a firm of that size the person who signs your reference is plausibly still there a decade later. In a house running twenty concurrent vacancies, the manager who could describe your work in detail may already have moved on — which is the practical reason the interim reference is written when the change happens rather than afterwards.

That a change of function is a documented moment follows from a neighbouring provision. Art. 330b paragraph 2 CO requires changes to the contractual elements subject to the duty of information — the employee's function is named explicitly, as are salary and weekly hours — to be communicated in writing within one month of taking effect. The point at which the work changes is also the point at which the previous stretch of it becomes describable.

Where the Code of Obligations stops applying

SECO prefaces its answers with the note that they concern private-law employment contracts, are indicative and non-binding, and that in a dispute only the civil court decides — and that they do not apply, or apply only to a limited extent, to public-law employment, particularly in the administration or in state-owned enterprises.

For federal employment the mechanism is named in the statute. Art. 6 paragraph 2 of the Federal Personnel Act provides that the relevant provisions of the Code of Obligations apply by analogy unless that Act or another federal statute provides otherwise, with paragraph 3 leaving the detail to implementing provisions, the collective employment contract and the individual contract. Each canton does the same for its own staff, which is why reference questions in public service are answered differently from canton to canton.

For an assessment of an individual case, the cantonal conciliation authorities for employment disputes, legal advice services and — in public service — the responsible personnel office are the right address. A general explanation such as this one can only show where the interim and final labels come from and what they carry.