Driving growth and innovation: Compliant hiring anywhere in the world

To stay ahead of competitors it is widely agreed that accessing the best talent is the most important factor. This often means going global in any search, utilizing hybrid or remote models.

However, employing international talent isn’t always easy. Firstly, an organization has to attract and retain that talent, then they have to stay compliant, and, finally, to get the business benefits they have to do this all in a framework that works. It is undeniably complex but that shouldn’t put businesses off as it’s not just the largest enterprises that can access international talent. To understand more, Kate Graham, head of content labs and insights at UNLEASH is joined by Kate Gray, director of people and talent at Omnipresent to talk through this important subject.

Watch on-demand to: 

• Understand more about why a world-class remote culture can benefit global hires but also the entire workforce.
• Hear how global hiring works at every stage of your business’ growth.
• Get to know more about using an employer of record (EOR) to access the widest talent pool.

Ambitious companies need to hire everywhere and we’re seeing that trend increase.” – Kate Gray, Director of People and Talent at Omnipresent.

Leaning into global talent

The advent of more remote and hybrid work for many employers has been a boon. Now they can access wider talent pools, no longer limited by geography. In many cases, this has meant accessing a global talent pool, too.

Many are doing this to get ahead of competitors. Spotify, pre-Musk Twitter, and even Omnipresent, explained Gray, have got a huge number of applicants for roles because employees can work from anywhere in the world. In fact, companies often get hundreds of times the number of applicants when they decide a vacancy is truly remote. As Gray said, to drive growth and innovation organizations to need to open up their talent pipelines and hire internationally as they can access people where they want to live and truly benefit from their happiness and motivation. Omnipresent is a good example of this: a growing business with 450 employees split across 53 countries.

However, it’s not quite as straightforward as just hiring someone, mailing them a laptop, and letting them get started from wherever they are. Building global teams is difficult, explained Gray. Companies need to have practices that reflect local customs and laws, understand the risks this entails, understand payroll (tax, filing needs, frequencies, and bonuses), and the added difficulties of not having a legal entity within the country they need to hire from. This is without even taking into account the difficulties involved in building a great remote culture and expectations around benefits.

For example, there are big differences between hiring in the US or Canada, more employer-friendly countries, compared to the EMEA region, which is more employee-friendly. It can mean a headache for companies wanting to access global talent.

Outsourcing the risk

Part of the solution to accessing global talent, Gray argued, is for companies to outsource the risk part using an employer of record (EOR). Many outsource everything from their learning and development, to their data storage, so global employment opportunities could go the same way, too. Yet, this needn’t be impersonal but with an expert partner who can increase talent team capacity and problem solve rapidly.

Outsourcing could also mean getting access to expertise on how a global hiring decision framework could work, explained Gray. A key part of hiring globally successfully is in creating a framework that considers the questions: what does it mean operationally to create and scale a global team? Here, consideration of where the key talent is located, if it needs to be located in a specific jurisdiction, what a salary benchmark might look like, what benefits might look like, what compliance looks like, and what an effective remote culture once hiring has been completed looks like, too. There also needs to be an understanding of contracting, employment, or using an employer of record is the right tack and if a company should ever need to consider setting up a legal entity in a specific country. These are problems an EOR can solve.

Global hiring also means understanding how talent markets shift, too. For example, is there a new global incubator for technology talent, and are you, as an employer, being set up to successfully access it? This requires a strategic outlook. Companies, of course, also need to be aware of shifting legislations in different countries in which they’re operating in, another place an employer of record can be useful with their on-hand employment lawyers.

Global hiring and cultural success

When undertaking a new strategic tack — such as changing recruitment to become more global — it can be easy to get bogged down in the process. And this is important. Global hiring needs to understand what good recruitment is, how to hire compliantly, how to set workers up for remote success, and even what good communication and even offboarding might look like. They also have to decide where they sit on the employer-friendly to employee-friendly spectrum when it comes to employment T&Cs and whether that will stand in line with local employment cultures or look somewhat different.

But another important consideration is ensuring a thriving, inclusive, and transparent culture on a team that might become global — with employees in New York, Manchester, Manila, and Bangalore. Here, Gray explained, communication is a key consideration in ensuring that it is inclusive at the point of access. For example, if an organization is wholly remote and most of the communication is done digitally via the written word, the organization needs to understand how this might impact those who are neurodiverse and those with physical impairments. They also need to understand how to make that scalable.

The process is also key, and it’s something that Gray said is important. It might mean working with global hiring experts or making a process and using systems designed for global hiring as most aren’t, expecting employers to be hired into several sites at most. It might also mean partnering with remote hiring experts or using remote job boards to access this talent as many go-to hiring tools are still not set up for this.

Gray also recommended creating a cultural checklist to ensure a global team works successfully. She said:

• Always think about who is not in the room — This means documenting information on calls and in meeting so employees can access it asynchronously. Especially as timezones are an issue and cannot always be managed around.
• Managing different cultural expectations — Understanding the small differences around how to communicate and give and receive feedback is a big deal. Companies need to get in the know.
• Understand what your employees want — Don’t assume as an employer you should go full steam ahead creating your vision of an asynchronous utopia. Survey employees and have alternate modes of meeting, communicating, and working to help your workforce.
• Remember boundaries! — Remember that different time zones will be working different hours and allow all employees, from the most junior to the most senior, to be able to set healthy hours.