Understanding global staffing agencies & optimizing your hiring approach

The term global staffing agency has undergone somewhat of a shift in recent years. While it started out as an early solution to hiring contract-based global talent without setting up a local entity, it now refers to several types of organizations each with distinct offerings. You wouldn’t be blamed for wondering how exactly they work. And how can you find the right solution for your needs? In this article, we’ll unpack everything you need to know with insights from Christine Orchard from global talent marketplace Arc.dev. We’ll also introduce Employer of Record (EOR) a solution you can use to seamlessly onboard employees — whether through a staffing agency or directly.

How does a global staffing agency work?

A global staffing agency is an organization that helps you find and/or onboard international talent. There are a few ways this can work:

• The global staffing agency finds staff for you to hire through your local entity.
• The global staffing agency finds staff for you and hires them on your behalf, becoming the official employer responsible for compliance with local laws, payroll, and administering benefits.
• You find the staff, but the global staffing agency employs them for you. In this case, the staffing agency is functioning as an Employer of Record: an organization that helps you hire, onboard, and manage employees in another country.
• The global staffing agency finds staff for you and hires them with the help of an Employer of Record.

Which global staffing agency model should you choose?

Which global staffing agency model you choose will depend on your specific hiring goals. If you already have a local entity set up, but you’re looking for a fast way to find talent, it of course makes sense to use a search-focused agency. The major advantage of these global staffing agencies is that they give you access to vetted people with crucial skills without you needing to spend hours searching across markets for them. As Orchard describes, “It’s all about access and precision. At Arc.dev, our global network and targeted recruiting let us place these candidates within days.” If, though, you’re looking for a global staffing agency that can also hire employees for you, make sure they have the infrastructure to support your long-term strategy. Most staffing agencies only cover 10-20 countries and some come with high costs in the long-term.

What is an Employer of Record?

An Employer of Record is an organization that helps you hire, onboard, and manage employees in another country. Using one means you don’t need to set up a local entity and go through the process of registering your business, opening local bank accounts, and acquiring the right paperwork. Let’s take a closer look at how the solution works.

Compliance, outsourced

Let’s say your company is based in the UK, for example, and you want to hire a new team member in Indonesia. With an EOR, you can begin working together without going through the time-consuming process of setting up a local office to stay compliant with local laws. EORs use their own entities, taking on the legal responsibility for hiring your team and ensuring compliance at every stage — from meeting employment laws to ensuring employees are paid correctly. This means you can hire staff without taking on risk.

HR tasks, simplified

As the legal employer of your team, an Employer of Record takes responsibility for managing HR functions. This means that while you retain operational control over your employees’ day-to-day, you don’t have to worry about tasks like payroll, benefits administration, expense management, and IT asset distribution.

Global staffing agency and EOR

In this section, we take a closer look at how an Employer of Record differs from but can complement a global staffing agency. But first, here’s a handy table for reference.

	Global Staffing Agency	EOR
Compliance	Sometimes	Yes
Benefits	Sometimes	Yes
Payroll	Sometimes	Yes
Recruitment tasks	Sometimes	No
Employment scope	Full-time and contract staff	Full-time staff

Employment scope

An Employer of Record allows you to easily onboard employees, taking on risk on your behalf and ensuring that you stay compliant with local labor laws, tax laws, and employment standards. They’ll generate contracts, collect employee forms, and support visas and work permits. If you’re looking for a solution that can help you onboard contractors, however, you should look to an Agent of Record instead. This service helps you ensure that contractors are correctly classified and then helps you pay them in line with local laws and in their desired currency. Depending on which company you use, a global staffing agency can help you hire both contractors and permanent staff, though, as we said before, they often partner with an EOR for this. Bringing a global staffing agency and EOR together allows you to secure top talent before the competition; with no delays to the recruitment process and no need to wait around for permits and business registration, you can onboard teams efficiently and provide a seamless experience from day one. As Orchard explains, “the partnership means you can onboard the right people in as little as two weeks.”

Access to talent

A global staffing agency gives you access to a large talent pool; they also often come with recruiters who can help you source specialized skills. This makes them a valuable tool in the face of the talent crunch, where many companies are struggling to find the skills they need locally. It’s important to know, however, that when you hire through a global staffing agency, your workers will sometimes still be legally employed by them;  this means that if another project arises, they could be offered the opportunity to take that when their contract ends. An EOR also acts as the legal employer of your international workers. However, it doesn’t have any involvement in hiring activities in any capacity. This means it purely acts as a facilitator for you to onboard the staff you need.

Employee experience

Both an EOR and a global staffing agency improve the employee experience — an EOR predominantly by supporting people with onboarding, benefits, seamless payroll, and a staffing agency predominantly by ensuring that new hires are a good fit for the company. As Orchard says, “a staffing agency doesn’t just look for the right skills, we also make sure new hires align with company culture and values.”

Optimizing your long-term talent acquisition strategy with an EOR

An EOR is a flexible solution that allows you to prepare for the future, whatever it holds. You can partner with a staffing agency or hire your own employees (or both) and know that all employees are being supported with a consistently strong onboarding experience, great benefits, and seamless payroll. Hire quickly, leave markets easily, and bolster your entire employee lifecycle — all while ensuring compliance at every stage. In Orchard’s words, “by combining a global staffing agency with an Employer of Record, you can take a huge burden off your plate.” Find out more about our leading Employer of Record solution. Book a demo.