How to deliver the best employee experience when you have to use an EOR to hire your overseas employees. If you are looking for advice on compliance and service quality when choosing an EOR, you’ve come to the right place. We’ll help you find the best solution.
At Contractor Taxation, we have been working with international employment since 2008. We have experience working with all the major EOR companies as well as the boutique providers specialised by region or industry. Whether you need to hire one person in France or build a remote team across the world, we’re here to help with you implement EOR services for international expansion. Our EOR advisory service is completely free. We are knowledgeable, friendly, and responsive by phone or email.
Why you need to hire in a new country
Hiring important employees overseas can be a difficult problem for HR to solve when you’re employing someone in a new location. Firstly you don’t have an entity which means you need a third party. But you also don’t have the familiarity that comes when you’ve had a bunch of employees in a country for a while. Instead you’ve got lots of risk and lots of unknowns. What are the rules? What are the cultural norms? What happens if there is a problem?
Despite all this, your company wants to hire someone in a brand new country.
Which means there is a Very Good Reason why your organisation needs this person in this place. Often they are going to be a source of creating new revenue for your company like a regional sales rep. Or their location is critical, for example they are an account manager servicing clients locally in a way you can’t do from your home base. Or they might be a big strategic employee who was hard to find anywhere else, like a CTO or a Head of Marketing.
Whatever their role, it is especially important for this employee, and this business objective, to succeed.
There are a bunch of factors involved in setting the employee up for success. A lot of work for you and your colleagues.
You’ve got to source the right person.
Negotiate and setup their compensation & benefits in a way that works for them and for you.
Provide them with training, support and oversight which can mean guiding their line manager on things like cross cultural communication and asynchronous work practices.
Get them onboarded and maximise their engagement.
It’s especially important that this employee starts well:
– with the best motivation
– attachment to your company
– time and attention available to focus on their job, their goals and getting the strategic outcomes that your company wants.
Because is extra hard to rescue if things start going off-track – especially for key roles, and across borders and timezones and cultures.
When EOR is the right solution
If you’ve got a bit of experience hiring internationally, you probably already understand where the EOR model fits in. The EOR acts as the employer of record, hiring your employee through their in-country entity on your behalf. You manage the employee day to day whilst the EOR handles in-country compliance and administration.
It’s a good match if you’ve got a small employee head count in a new country or in a country where you don’t want to overcommit. It gives more security, control and compliance compared to hiring people as contractors. And it’s faster, cheaper and much easier to close down than incorporating an entity.
But as I’m sure you’re aware, EOR has pro’s and con’s. In particular the customer service and quality of advice can be frustratingly inconsistent. Especially when you compare it to the other level you receive from your other international vendors like law firms, tax advisors, global mobility providers and HR consultancies.
A brief history of EOR
It might help here to give a bit of an inside insight on the EOR industry. EOR experienced a massive boom during covid. For a while there remote work was going to be the future of work. And interest rates were close to zero in most economies which meant a lot of venture capital and private equity money was invested in EOR companies.
On the positive side this meant that EOR providers had access to plenty of money, ostensibly to build out infrastructure and technology. The increased competition meant fees went down, especially during the early years of Deel and Remote. Legacy providers like Globalization Partners and Velocity Global (now Pebl) had to cut their fees dramatically to stay competitive.
Ultimately all the big providers are chasing the same pathway: Hockey stick growth, more funding, hyperscale and then a big exit like an IPO. So the bulk of their focus and funding is allocated towards growth. Big marketing budgets, huge sales teams and loss-making fees to drive more customer acquisition. We even saw EOR adverts at the Super Bowl!
However from 2022 to present the funding and growth market for these companies has tightened dramatically. The boom in remote work has flattened. Interest rates have gone up. The money tap has turned off. They have the same lofty evaluations and targets, but a much tougher environment to operate in. They need high volume clients that are scaling big teams overseas. And they need medium sized clients which are cheap to acquire and service.
What does this mean for you?
Customer service in EOR generally follows the same template as most large tech-focussed companies. A tech heavy offering that works for the widest range of people with the least amount of administrative overhead and cost. We’re talking heavily automated on-boarding, self help documentation and omnipresent chat bots. If you are lucky, maybe a 24/7 human-staffed chat service.
For many clients and many employees this can work out okay. Lots of employees are easy to support for most of their employment. Many countries are pretty straightforward to operate in. Many of the situations that come up for you and your international employees won’t be too complex or urgent. These slick, automated systems are good for solving simple problems and if you can read a blog post and solve it yourself, that’s generally the quickest fix.
But what if it’s not simple?
If you need individual support from a hyperscaled tech focussed company… it’s a nightmare. And it’s particularly bad in an area like EOR. For a streaming company like Spotify or Netflix, there is a fairly linear domain – only so much can go wrong. But international employment is a totally different space.
As HR professionals we understand the basic complexity that arises when you have unique and unpredictable people involved at both ends. Or perhaps more accurately, in every direction! It is part of what makes it such a fun and interesting area to work.
International employment adds more variables into that mix. You have another countries entire labor law, tax, payroll and social security regulations to deal with. Which are probably at least as complicated and nuanced and ever-changing as those of your home country. There are timezones which complicate communication. Cultural differences can lead to misunderstandings. And let’s not forget that your business has to be agile, especially with initiatives like international expansion.
It is almost inevitable that complex issues will come up. And it really helps to have expertise to help solve them.
What happens when you need help?
The most important tools in international HR are the ability to communicate clearly and find out answers. Being responsive is pretty important too. Unfortunately most EOR providers don’t make it easy when your issue requires human interaction to resolve.
For example on the surface a 24/7 live chat or call center looks impressive – you can reach out immediately. But you’re talking to first line support who can’t help with anything complicated. They are juggling multiple clients at once. And the second level and third level support people, the ones who might be able to help you, they aren’t available 24/7. In fact they’re quite busy and located on the other side of the world. Every time you speak to a new person you have to restate what you need or give them 15 minutes to read the case notes. And none of them have any real context on you or your company or your employee or the problem you need solved. In the worst case scenario you can get stuck in this seven levels of support hell where you’re constantly hoping that the next person is someone who can actually help you.
We should include the caveat here that if you are an enterprise customer the experience can be different. If you are running hundreds of employees through EOR and spending six figures in annual fees, you might be given a phone number to call. You might even get an account manager. But if you have a smaller cohort, no such luck.
Where does this leave you?
Every day that ticks past, every half-explanation that results in follow up questions, every time your employee or business stakeholder follows up with you… these all take a toll. On your patience obviously. But it also makes it harder to resolve the issue and keep your employee engaged and your business happy. Relatively small problems can become big ones just through time and neglect.
Imagine, for example, that you are dealing with a performance issue and need guidance on how to communicate with the employee and the line manager so that you can get them back on track but also make expectations clear and cover yourself against unfair dismissal. This requires understanding if there is any difference between you & the line manager’s understanding and the laws of the host country. You need to understand your employee’s expectations which are informed by local custom and culture as well as regulations. And of course it goes without saying that there is pressure to act quickly.
This can be a high stakes exercise. If it is communicated poorly to the employee it might destroy any chance of recovering the relationship. And if it does lead to termination of employment the laws in almost every country are generally very favourable towards the employee. This can come as quite a shock to American employers used to “at-will”. Bear in mind as well that your EOR service agreement will state that regardless of advice you may or may not have received from your EOR, if the employee files a successful claim against their employment then you’ll be expected to pick up the bill.
Taking all this into account is it likely that an article in their knowledge base is going to give you the confidence you deserve? Wouldn’t it be nice to speak to a genuine expert instead?
People matter
Let’s not forget that what you are doing is hard and you deserve some support. It’s hard to do business internationally. It’s hard to find the right person to work for your company from a foreign country. It’s hard to be that employee and adapt to working for an overseas employer. It’s hard to manage that employee. And it’s hard to be HR and looking after all of this. You don’t need any additional challenges in this mix like unnecessary friction from your EOR.
Your employee shouldn’t be just a growth statistic to your service provider. There is usually a Very Good Reason why you’re going to the effort of hiring in a new country which is difficult for you to support. They are your Head of EMEA sales or your VP of Strategy or your Chief Technology Officer or maybe even a brand new role for your org. They were probably hard to find. Their success is strategically important for your company.
You deserve an EOR provider who understands this. Who gets that it is a big deal for your company. Who shares your goal for your employee to succeed at their job. Who knows that building and maintaining engagement with new foreign employees is extra hard.
Is your EOR a help or a hindrance?
How you and your employee are treated is really important. And this is where the hidden cost of poor service can be felt. It can harm your employee’s engagement and how they feel about the setup or their job or your company. It can undermine your line managers. It can sap your will. And it can derail your organisation’s business objective.
The Good Place
You want your employee to be treated really well. You want to be able to accommodate any reasonable requests that are going to set them up for success.
And you want their attention and energy and focus to be on doing a great job and delivering a great outcome for themselves and for you and for your company.
You don’t want them to be worried about whether their social security has been setup correctly, or when they will get a response about their private health insurance or having to chase up an expense reimbursement or, heaven forbid, whether they’re going to get paid correctly and on time.
And if something does need fixing, you definitely don’t want them or you to be dealing with a chatbot or a clueless firstline support person who wants to point you into a knowledge base you already searched.
We’ve been there. We understand what you need. And we can deliver it.
And this is where great customer service is really important. You want a single point of contact. Someone who knows you, your company and your employee. Who treats your employees as well as they treat their own employees. Who understands what you’re trying to do and the bigger strategic picture for your organisation. Who understands the importance of this relationship and who never stops working to help you get the right outcomes.
You want someone who acts as your international HR Subject Matter Expert, someone you wished was working alongside you all the time.
Who updates you reliably, even if it’s just to say we haven’t heard back yet but we will by tomorrow morning. Who explains any delays or hiccups so you’re not left guessing. And who makes sure that when the answer comes, it’s got all the detail you need so you don’t have to go through any unnecessary communication cycles across timezones.
Someone who understands that when you get a call from your higher ups, you need the latest information at your fingertips.
And someone who’s always ready to pick up the phone and talk it through so you’re all on the same page.
What We Do: Free EOR Advisory
We will give you a free consult by phone, zoom or email. We will take time to understand what you need and then give you our advice. And we know what we’re doing.
What help do we offer?
It is quite flexible but generally is one of:
- Recommending a different EOR that better suits you
- Changing your processes for managing your EOR employees
- Renegotiating with your current EOR
- Helping you manage your EOR employees
- Using a different model than EOR like engaging workers as contractors or incorporating your own entity
Why us?
✓ Over 18 Years of Experience
We’ve been here since 2008, before the EOR industry started.
✓ Unparalleled Knowledge
We founded one of first EOR companies (Shield GEO), we’ve worked with almost every EOR and umbrella company in the world and we have employed our own staff through EOR. We understand all aspects of EOR from sales and onboarding through to payroll adminstration, issue resolution and handling terminations.
✓ We Know All Your Options
We have experience of all the established EOR companies and many smaller providers that are specialised in a region or industry.
✓ Handle all industries and job titles
Historically we used to specialise in IT contractors but today we can service almost any industry or role – as long as our partner’s insurers will take it on.
✓ Solution Agnostic
We understand when to hire as a contractor, when to employ through an EOR and when to incorporate. We’ve used all 3 solutions extensively and even moved between them within country as our needs changed over the years. We’ll help you discover what works best for your situation.
Our background
CT has been around since 2008, before the global EOR industry started. Safeguard World didn’t start offering global employment at scale until 2009. There was no Deel or Remote or Globalization Partners. Back then our focus was mostly on international IT contractors working fixed term around the world. And we built up a network of local partners, companies that knew how to pay workers compliantly in their local jurisdiction. Often they could organise work permits and visas for foreign workers too.
Over time we had more and more corporate clients contact us for help with their international employees. We introduced them to our partners but there was a disconnect with service levels. Our partners were used to dealing with individual contractors and recruiters. Corporate clients were different. They had more complex needs, higher expectations in responsiveness and support and access to expertise. Our partners struggled and we had to get more and more involved to smooth out interactions and solve problems.
We realised that we could, in effect, resell our local partners’ product in a way that better served growing companies with international employees.
So in 2015 we created Shield GEO. This was still before Employer of Record had become common parlance – we were calling it GEO (global employment organisation). That term never stuck but what did work was our dedication to good service.
Our model was to use local partners but act as a “service layer” for our clients. Dedicated account managers, personal service, very responsive, transparent, reliable and empathetic. We became experts at problem solving. And our clients were happy. We grew to support 900 EOR employees for more than 300 companies across 55 countries.
And we practiced what we preached. Our own 75 staff were located in 24 countries. We used our same local partners to employ our own people. We had many of the same issues that our clients experienced with setting up benefits and negotiating compensation and managing performance and handling random HR issues and difficult terminations. Which was complex and stressful at times but very valuable for building our empathy for what our clients went through.
And our clients were happy. We only ever lost 2 customers to our competitors. Almost 70% of our new EOR employees came from our existing clients. It’s important to note that this wasn’t just because our service was so amazing (although we believe we delivered great service). It was mostly because our clients were getting good results from their international business activities and wanting to expand further.
This meant they had sourced the right person, they had set them up well and the person had succeeded. And now our client wanted to do it again somewhere else. And our job was to make sure that the EOR portion was a positive contribution towards that success. Generally by being as invisible, reliable and friction free as possible.
Who we help best
Our services best suit clients who
- Want the peace of mind that comes from dealing with friendly, responsive, accessible expertise
- Employee experience is very important
- Compliance and reliability are non-negotiable
- Have employed internationally before & familiar with some of the good and bad
- Have used EOR before
- Worried about risk, complexity and cost of situations like performance management and termination of overseas employees.
Who we don’t suit
We don’t work well for clients who
- Want a hands-off tech focussed solution
- Are looking for the cheapest solution
- Believe they won’t have complications with their international employees
How It Works: Simple, Straightforward Process
Step 1: Free Consultation
Contact us by phone or email. Tell us about your hiring needs: How many people? What roles? What’s your timeline? We’ll discuss your options—no obligation.
Step 2: We Present Your Options
Based on your needs, we’ll recommend several solutions such as providers who deliver great, responsive personalised service
Step 3: We Help You Choose
We’ll explain the pros and cons of each option in plain English. You’ll understand exactly what you’re getting, what it costs, and what the compliance implications are.
Step 4: We Facilitate Setup
Once you’ve chosen your solution, we can help coordinate the setup. We’re here to answer questions throughout the process.
Step 5: Ongoing Support
Even after your employees are onboarded, we’re available if you have questions, need to scale up, or want to adjust your arrangement.
Contractor Taxation – Your friendly, knowledgeable partner for EOR advice. We know all your options, and we’re here to help you choose the best one.
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