Efficiency doubled: How Pelago solved its global HR bottleneck

The challenge: Employing across borders

Despite already using an EOR to manage their initial international hires, Pelago faced a critical barrier to scaling. While the existing vendor provided the mechanism for hiring, it failed to provide the cost-efficiency, transparency, and partnership required to grow its overseas headcount growth.

These inefficiencies threatened to derail Pelago’s agility in the competitive travel market. With a lean HR team of only three people based in Singapore, they lacked the subject matter expertise required to navigate the complex labor laws of multiple countries they intended to hire in.

The HR team was also forced to operate with a frustrating lack of oversight. Their previous platform restricted access to critical data, such as employee expense claims, limiting visibility only to managers. This resulted in a disconnect between people operations and actual employee activity.

“The employee experience wasn’t user friendly,“ says Evelyn Goh, People Operations Assistant Manager at Pelago. “We felt like we didn’t have an overview of what’s going on.”

Pelago’s setup was fundamentally unscalable. They were trapped in a model where every new hire compounded their financial inefficiency due to high vendor fees. With their internal capacity maxed out, they needed a true partner to handle the legal complexities of entering markets like India, Indonesia, and Japan.

The solution: Expanding Pelago’s HR capabilities

Pelago solved its growth bottleneck by implementing a cost-effective, transparent EOR solution.

This shift transformed their global operations from a compliance burden into a streamlined, scalable process. The onboarding process saw Pelago successfully navigate the complex legal hurdles of switching providers. The most significant hurdle was transferring existing employees from the previous EOR to Multiplier.

“We had concerns about acknowledging years of service or even leave accrual which the team managed to address,” 

Evelyn Goh,

People Operations Assistant Manager, Pelago

Multiplier’s team managed this delicate transition by creating legal documents ensuring that years of service and accrued leave balances were acknowledged and carried over, preserving the employees’ benefits despite the change in legal employer.

The transition was stable, with the dedicated Customer Success Manager providing hands-on support throughout the migration.

Multiplier’s support team functioned as an extension of Pelago’s lean three-person HR department. “Our team of three are not subject matter experts,” says Goh. “So having a new partner that is an expert in all these fields just made sense for us.”

Multiplier centralized the management of its new employees across multiple countries (including India, Indonesia, and Japan) into a single dashboard, eliminating the messy job of managing tasks like payroll dates and benefits administration across disparate systems in multiple countries.

The result: A streamlined, scalable solution

The impact of the switch was immediate. Multiplier ensured that everything from payroll dates to expense approvals was aligned and compliant, allowing the team to spend their time more valuably.

The HR team estimates they cut the time spent on compliance and administrative tasks in half. 

Pelago also believes that at its current scale it would have been paying approximately twice as much to its previous EOR provider, demonstrating the efficiency of Multiplier’s pricing model.

Moreover, the HR team gained an immediate overview of what employees were claiming, solving the blind spot that had previously frustrated operations.

“With Multiplier in the picture, it definitely helped to alleviate the pains of the team,” says Evelyn Goh, People Operations Assistant Manager, Pelago.

The implementation of Multiplier transformed Pelago’s global operations from a costly, opaque administrative burden into a streamlined, scalable competitive advantage as they grew to an international team.

And now, when Pelago enters a new market, Multiplier acts as a partner. It provides a playbook of key considerations and fact-check the HR team’s assumptions before onboarding begins.

The team serves as the primary reliance point for sensitive issues, such as interpreting statutory regulations. This advisory role ensures Pelago remains compliant without needing internal experts for every jurisdiction.

Multiplier has enabled Pelago to bypass the steep learning curve of global expansion, freeing them up for more valuable activities. Pelago’s HR team can now shift its focus to retention and refinement, aligning benefits across their global workforce to ensure fairness and improve the employee value proposition.

“With our team being very small we have other areas we can now focus on such as hiring and employee engagement,” says Goh. “Multiplier feels like an extension of the team. They focus on things that they are good at so we can focus on what matters most internally.”