Glovo dodged Spain's Rider Law with an app tweak — three years later it hired 15,000

In 2021 Spain's Rider Law introduced a presumption of employment whenever a digital platform organizes, directs or controls couriers' work, including through algorithmic management. Glovo, the Barcelona-based delivery platform owned by Delivery Hero, responded with what looked like a clever fix: redesign its app so couriers could log in freely, reject orders without explicit penalties, and choose a daily rate multiplier — emphasizing autonomy to avoid classifying them as employees.

Three years later the fix had failed. Glovo and Delivery Hero announced they would hire roughly 15,000 couriers in Spain as employees, incurring what MIT Sloan Management Review describes as a significant financial hit. The workaround had simply delayed the reclassification the company had sought to prevent.

The interim was costly: courier protests over lower earnings, mounting employment-related penalties — Spain fined Delivery Hero's Glovo €78 million in 2022 over hiring breaches — and a criminal case against Glovo raised its exposure further.

Esade researchers Laura Reijnders and Bilgehan Uzunca, writing in MIT Sloan Management Review, coined the pattern the 'algorithmic compliance trap': in algorithmic businesses, minimal-compliance fixes expand the audit surface, increase internal complexity, and invite the scrutiny that pushes a company toward the very redesign it tried to avoid.

About 15,000 couriers hired as employees; mounting penalties including a €78 million fine in 2022 for hiring breaches; a criminal case against Glovo

The app redesign preserved the business model on paper while leaving the algorithmic control it was meant to hide intact.

Algorithmic management generated auditable evidence that couriers were directed and controlled, whatever the login flow suggested.

Regulators, courts and protesting couriers each pulled toward the same outcome: employment status.

Three years and a €78 million fine later, Glovo accepted the classification it had engineered its app to avoid.

Minimal compliance is a bet that the rule only reads your paperwork: in an algorithmic business, the workaround itself leaves the audit trail that forces the redesign.

As of the MIT Sloan Review article (2026): Glovo was hiring roughly 15,000 couriers as employees in Spain, alongside continued courier protests, accumulated penalties including the 2022 hiring-breaches fine, and a criminal case — the authors' flagship example of a workaround that collapses into the redesign it defied.