Want to hear something scary? A phenomenon known as the talent crunch, caused by a lack of humans with the necessary skills for the modern workplace, threatens to prove catastrophic for the global economy. Indeed, according to a Korn Ferry report, there will be a global human talent shortage of more than 85 million people by 2030, resulting in a loss of about $8.5 trillion in unrealized annual revenues.
The instinctive response to this lack of talent is to widen the search globally. But that’s far easier said than done. A host of potential issues present themselves when hiring across international borders, from payroll worries to compliance headaches.
Thankfully, global employment solutions are here to help businesses reliably and legally hire effortlessly across borders without worrying about incorporating new entities everywhere they hire workers. In essence, a global employment service offers businesses the freedom to manage and oversee the work of a global team while they handle the boring stuff.
What is Global Employment?
Global employment, also known as international employment, can be defined as employing eligible people outside the company’s current country. This process includes hiring employees worldwide and ensuring that employment laws and labor codes specific to their country are adhered to. The organization shall pay the employees according to the market rate or the employee’s preferred salary.
The most critical aspects of global employment are the taxes and requirements of the hiring candidate’s country, which the company must abide by. Circumventing these laws may prove more detrimental in the long run. There are also international employment laws, depending on the country; that’s why it’s essential to understand each country’s background.
More importantly, global employment entails fully remote work. It’s often difficult to grasp because of its difference from the in-office work environment. That’s why it’s important to know the benefits of global employment.
Is a global employment solution right for you? Four factors to consider
It’s little wonder, then, that one of the major reasons companies use global employment outsourcing is to steer clear of unnecessary expenses and effort.
But while the higher flexibility provided by a global employment service brings peace of mind—thanks to their in-built expertise in local labor laws, HR support, and scalability— that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily right for everyone.
On that point, we’ve collected a list of scenarios where global employment platforms more than prove their worth.
If your organization fits the below-given scenarios, then employing a global employment services provider is almost a no-brainer!
1. You’re setting up remote teams
If you want to expand to countries where you do not have a physical presence but don’t want the hassle of setting up a legal entity, then a global employment software is the perfect option. That’s particularly true when setting up in distant countries that may harbor significant talent but are particularly tricky to incorporate into, thanks to the extent to which local laws differ from your own country’s.
2. You’re entering a new market
Picture the scene. You’re a growing business, boldly entering new markets and capturing global audiences. The bigger you get, however, the more you realize you need local talent to back you up. A global employment tool offers the flexibility necessary to onboard local talent fast and keep your business growing!
3. You’re hiring foreign independent contractors
If you hire independent foreign contractors and local employees, a global employment partner is critical in mitigating compliance risk. Not only that, but a global employment partner will help you streamline your payroll, compensation, and benefits and improve talent retention in the long run.
4. You’re acquiring or merging with global companies
Acquisitions and mergers are synonymous with laborious admin, from due diligence research to aligning disparate systems. The last thing you or your HR personnel want is the hassle of working out how to onboard the workers of the company you’ve acquired. A global employment platform can make the process convenient by implementing a one-point payroll and tax system and introducing standardized tracking methods for time and expense.
What are the challenges of Global Employment?
There are risks associated with global team staffing that permeates to co-employment, especially if two or more entities share the responsibility of employing the worker. Risks such as misclassification and communication problems are often the cases that global employment services solve.
However, we will focus more on the upside of tapping global talent, understanding the challenges of building a global workforce, and how global employment enhances the success of building an open, multicultural workforce.
The most common challenges companies face in achieving a successful global employment program are issues around:
1. Communication
Communication is a constant issue across all working environments owing to language barriers and heavy regional accents. Timezones and flexible work schedules are also natural hindrances in achieving smooth communication.
How can you improve communication in your team?
To solve these issues, employers must first hire the right candidate with a strong command of the international lingua franca or the desired language the company wants to use.
Another aspect is to provide guidance and leadership in setting the communication culture among the workforce. Setting weekly workshops and reiterating the company culture can improve employee communication by leaps and bounds. What’s important is to focus on improving the individual employee’s interactions with colleagues and the company.
Tools and processes also minimize communication issues between remote global teams. Effective using Slack, Zoom, or Microsoft Zoom can bridge the gap in communication between teams.
With enough time, forming the proper organizational habits in communication will yield efficient productivity for your company.
2. Interruptions and distractions
Interruptions and distractions always abound, even within the workplace, and are unavoidable. With remote work, it’s even more inevitable because of the unique environment each employee is in.
So, what can you do to minimize those distractions?
One of the best solutions for minimizing distractions is to provide working spaces for your employees.
How can you do this if they’re all remote?
Providing co-working spaces for clusters of employees living near each other could help set the work environment. This also gives a sign that your company cares about its employees. You’re hitting two birds with one stone here.
One, you’re providing space to help your employees focus. Two, you recognize that every individual is different. Providing a space for work can help your workforce be more productive. But this should not be the norm and can be given in special circumstances.
The most important aspect of dealing with distractions and interruptions must come from your employee. You can solve this issue in the initial stages of hiring. Screen for self-disciplined individuals with a strong mental proclivity for focus to avoid distracted employees.
3. Isolation
Working remotely has tons of benefits for the employee.
Having the luxury to work at home and spend more days with the people you love is the best thing that’s happened with the pandemic. However, not everybody has a family or people they can be with. Sometimes isolation is part of working remotely.
With prolonged isolation, mental health decline cannot be avoided and hampers productivity.
Besides isolation from other people, sometimes isolation from teams or the company is also possible. Even though communication lines are open, the interaction quality differs from face-to-face communication.
What can you do to minimize the effect of isolation?
Encouraging your employees to work in communal workspaces like coffee shops, coworking spaces, or open floor plans can provide human stimulation to avoid personal isolation.
One way your company can also minimize the isolation of an individual employee is to over-communicate with the tasks and responsibilities they have. Of course, lending in the human touch, like reaching out and connecting with isolated employees, can also be a solution.
Encourage your employees to schedule a personal time for themselves and get fresh air. Small breaks are needed to keep employee satisfaction and productivity flowing.
4. Career Advancement
Like regular employees, remote employees are also interested in advancing their careers. Managing a remote working team is a whole other challenge in itself, but individuals must be given opportunities to further their skills and their careers through their work. Even though it’s difficult to conceptualize a structure when working remotely, regular opportunities for vertical growth are still desirable.
How will you assess the performance of your team?
Setting the same standards for remote employees and regular employees is paramount. You can start by creating an employee evaluation program for your remote employees in line with regular employees.
Keep your focus more on the quality rather than the quantity of your employee’s progress. Create key performance indicators to identify who is performing according to your company’s standards. This will help you determine who is suitable to progress within the company.
5. Payroll and Compliance
As you know, different countries have different currencies and taxes. Each has unique requirements and currencies that may be difficult to track. The rates you have in your country most likely aren’t found in other countries.
Unless you have dedicated personnel for payroll and compliance, you may find it troublesome to keep yourself in line with each country’s strict policies. Failing to do so would spell unwanted fees and legal trouble.
How can you stay compliant with your employee’s payroll?
As stated above, you can hire dedicated employees to cover your compliances. They’ll be in charge of keeping your taxes filed and your international employees paid. However, the added expenditure may not be worth it if you only have a handful of international employees.
An alternative solution is to hire global employment services specializing in international payroll and compliance. They have the experience, personnel, and industry knowledge to provide your needed services. They can also offer HR platforms that can be integrated in your company to optimize your payroll, compliance, and other HR processes.
What matters most is staying compliant and avoiding major penalties that can damage your company’s reputation. By staying on top of the legal aspects of international employment, you’ll minimize the roadblocks you have in the future.
Must have features to consider when choosing a GES tool
If you’re not in one of those groups, you can probably stop reading now (don’t worry, we’re not upset). If you’re still here, you may be wondering what exactly sets different global employment services apart from each other? While the specific mix varies between companies, here are some key parts of a typical offering.
1. Employer of Record Capabilities
An employer of record lets businesses take a shortcut to global employment. By serving as the legal employer of their clients’ workers across multiple countries, employers of record enable businesses to hire foreign talent without excessive admin.
With Multiplier, you can expand into unexplored talent markets in more than 170 countries and focus on boosting your growth without worrying over other administrative processes.
2. Easy Onboarding
Global employment means little if it’s not just as fast, or even faster, than employing a local worker. The best global employment services ensure onboarding can be done in minutes, from compliance to contract.
Speaking of the best, Multiplier helps avoid technological onboarding hiccups by letting employers select from an online catalog of hardware products with local prices and availability displayed in real-time before shipping them to employees.
3. Unified Payroll
A unified payroll platform offered by a global employment service makes it easy to send international payments in the local currencies of employees while simultaneously taking care of their taxes and social contributions.
Multiplier’s global employment tool offers you the convenience of using a single payroll platform for your global employees. Ditch the pain of maintaining multiple spreadsheets and replace them with a single platform that handles payments, taxes, benefits, social contributions, and more for globally distributed teams.
4. Localized Contract Creation
As a legally binding document outlining the relationship between the employer and the employee, contracts must stand up to scrutiny in the local jurisdiction. After all, a lack of knowledge about said country’s labor laws can seriously affect your operating efficiency as you struggle to get up to speed.
The best global employment solutions make generating employee contracts that are compliant with local laws and in local languages easy. That’s why Multiplier features auto-generated contracts and boasts staff with expert local knowledge on everything from immigration to local tax compliance, payroll, and expense claim management. In short, we help administer all your talent requirements in the most efficient way possible.
5. Invoices for Independent Employees
Global employment solutions aren’t only useful for hiring full-time employees. Global payroll solutions make generating invoices for freelancers and independent contractors easy, helping to track the time and expenses and create single invoices no matter where the contracted employee is from.
Multiplier lets you manage global contractors on one platform, providing access to all the benefits of contract employment while we take care of onboarding, compliance, and payout. What’s more, you can pay any number of freelancers, anywhere in the world with just one click.
6. Tracking of Time and Expenses
Curating the timesheets and expense sheets of individuals from various time zones is a mundane and meticulous task—especially when done via a spreadsheet. A good global employment service offers a combined portal for tracking time and expenses under a single roof and directly links it to invoicing and payment.
With a global employment platform like Multiplier directly handling employee management, you can instead focus on core business operations and work on increasing productivity and growth for your company.
Key takeaways
Global employment has taken the world by storm. This pandemic made us realize that working remotely is feasible in our day and age. There’s no excuse for you not to tap into the world’s talent pool.
Any time, anywhere, you have the means to employ talents from all over the world. You can have a competitive edge by onboarding people from around the globe with skills and experience that surpasses your expectations.
This helps you push the envelope forward in improving creativity and innovation within your organization. And with your diverse workforce in place, it’ll be easier for you to launch new campaigns in emerging markets outside your country.
Keep in mind that there are still challenges with global team staffing which are:
- Miscommunication
- Unending interruptions and distractions
- Inevitable isolation
- Unclear career advancement
We can minimize these issues by
- Hiring the right people with a strong command of the preferred language is always a must.
- Providing workspaces or incentives but, more importantly, hiring the right people
- Encouraging your employees to work in outside environments with other people, even without personal interaction
- Providing appropriate KPIs to guide your employees for constant improvement and let them be qualified for the position
On top of all that, always communicate with your workforce and let them provide horizontal feedback through managers and stakeholders. We can’t reiterate this enough – constant communication with your international employees is necessary. As with international employment, you must be clear and concise in your communication style.
See to it that every point is clear. Minimize miscommunication every chance you get. When this is clear, improvements will follow.
Ramp Up Your Global Employment With Multiplier
With all the benefits global employment entails, tapping into the potential is worth the challenge. It is certainly difficult to lead a global workforce, but it’s not impossible.
Don’t let this opportunity to let your business grow to pass you by.
We at Multiplier can help you jump-start your international employment journey. We have entities in over 150 countries all over APAC, Europe, and the Americas. We provide an all-in-one payment platform solution with over 120 currencies directly payable to global employees. We have legal and accounting experts to help with local compliances across different countries.
Book your demo today!
Frequently Asked Questions About Global Employment
1. What is the role of a global mobility team in global employment?
A global mobility team is responsible for managing international assignments, employee relocations, and compliance with immigration, tax, and employment regulations across different countries. They facilitate the smooth transition and support of employees working globally.
2. How does global employment differ from local employment?
While local employment focuses on compliance within a specific country or region, global employment involves navigating international laws, regulations, and tax requirements.
3. What is the role of an employer of record in global employment?
An employer of record (EOR) is a third-party organization that takes legal responsibility for employing workers on behalf of a company in a foreign country. They handle payroll, benefits, tax compliance, and other employment-related tasks.
4. What Are the Legal Implications of Global Employment?
Global employment involves complex legal considerations such as labor laws, contract peculiarities, and other regulations. Engaging a global employment provider familiar with both the hiring entity’s and employee’s locations helps ensure adherence to all applicable laws.
5. How Does Taxation Work for Global Employees?
Taxation for global employees is intricate. Tax liabilities depend on factors like residency, duration of work, and income source. Many countries have double taxation agreements to prevent being taxed twice on the same income. Without an employer of record, remote workers might owe taxes in both their home country and where their employer is based—which is just one reason why having one is so essential!
6. How Do Global Employment Platforms Work?
It’s simple, really. Let’s take Multiplier as our example. The platform serves as a one-stop shop to take care of your global teams’ payroll, taxes, social contributions, and local insurance policies, letting you generate employment contracts that comply with local laws while serving as an employer of record to let you onboard and pay employees through the platform.
