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As more organizations look for effective ways to improve their agility, many have adapted their organizational structures to support more flexible working arrangements for their employees. This has led to various businesses maintaining distributed workforces to help manage their costs and create a wider pool of talent.
However, while there is no doubt a number of advantages of remaining open to the possibility of hiring remote workers, it can present certain operational challenges, especially when it comes to managing various HR processes.
In order to manage a global workforce successfully, it’s important to put into practice certain HR strategies in order to create a highly effective team while also retaining your talent long-term.
Legal and Compliance Considerations
While it’s much easier than ever to hire employees who live in other countries, there are a number of legal and compliance considerations that should be made before beginning a professional relationship. Some of these include:
Visas and Work Permits
A primary consideration that should be made before hiring overseas employees is to make sure that your business has the necessary visas or work permits. Depending on the employee’s location, there may be specific requirements in order to contract or hire individuals based on their nationality and regulations in the country they reside in.
You’ll want to ensure you initiate this process early since application procedures for employment can take a long time and cause regular delays.
Employment Contracts
Before hiring an international employee, you’ll want to take the time to create a comprehensive employment contract. Some of the key elements to include in an employment contract include compensation agreements, benefits coverage, and any applicable termination clauses. This helps to avoid legal disputes down the road.
Taxation Rules
It’s also important to research international taxation laws for the regions your remote employees live in. Some countries have treaties in place to protect individuals from being double taxed in both countries. In other situations, employees may need to provide certain documentation to prove they are reporting their own taxes and passing tax liabilities from the business over to the individual.
Cultural Sensitivity and Communication
Outside of ensuring all legal elements are lined up, it’s also important to make sure you’re developing an inclusive work environment for remote employees. It’s important to recognize and support the differences of employees with unique cultures and help to make them feel comfortable in their remote working setting. This involves:
Cultural Awareness
One way businesses can support a more inclusive company culture is to organize cultural awareness training for managers and their employees. This helps everyone to better understand and appreciate the value of unique perspectives and cultural differences and work together to create a safe space for all employees.
Adapting Communication Styles
Depending on where your employees live, there may be some modifications that need to be made to internal communications to ensure no one becomes offended. Some cultures may have a more conservative or reserved way of communicating, which should be taken into account when organizing team initiatives or setting meeting agendas.
Customizing Onboarding Processes
Another thing businesses can do to make sure their employees adapt well to their new environment is to create a more customized onboarding process based on the individual. This might involve providing additional resources, adapting languages used, and even providing a dedicated mentor from an existing team to help them get up-to-speed and feel supported.
Compensation and Benefits
When hiring all employees, it’s critical to design a fair and transparent compensation package for all remote workers. However, it’s especially important when creating these packages that the cost of living in a host country can be significantly different than others, which requires additional research.
Ensuring Competitive Employment Offers
While you may have researched salary benchmarks in your own country, it’s important to duplicate that research when hiring employees overseas to make sure you’re offering competitive compensation. You’ll want to think about factors like currency exchange rates, inflation, and any taxing requirements of the employee’s home region.
International Benefits
If your business plans on offering certain benefits to employees, you’ll want to consider what’s reasonable or required for the employee. Some countries may already have free healthcare, which may mean any benefits you offer in that area may not be considered valuable. Instead, look at other provisions that could be beneficial while still offering a good incentive when acquiring and retaining top talent overseas.
Practical Tips for HR Professionals
Managing a distributed workforce can come with a number of unique challenges for HR professionals to navigate. However, by taking the right approach and ensuring you’ve allocated the right amount of resources, you can create a highly productive and motivated workforce.
Build a Global HR Team
It can be invaluable to have a global HR team for your business if you’re looking to hire multiple employees internationally. Having multiple team members with different cultures and backgrounds helps manage your HR processes and can help you implement better policies and best practices when trying to create a more culturally sensitive and inclusive business.
Utilize Available Technology
For modern businesses, there are a number of highly effective tools and solutions that can be used to help facilitate communication and collaboration for disturbed workforces. Video conferencing tools, project management software, and cloud-based HR platforms are just a few examples of smart investments businesses can make to help improve their business’s sense of connection between all employees.
Work With Qualified Staffing Partners
When you need to hire employees overseas, partnering with reputable staffing agencies and recruitment services can be an invaluable investment. These agencies already have extensive networks of pre-vetted individuals and are experts in sourcing relevant talent for your business.
Improve Your HR Processes When Hiring International Employees
By placing more priority on your HR processes when hiring employees internationally, you’ll be able to successfully navigate the legal and cultural obligations of your business, while helping to establish a high-performing team that helps your business grow sustainably.
About the Author
Daniel Parker is the Founder and CEO of Sound Decisions. Daniel comes from a long history of technical roles in different startups eventually finding his way to Talent Sourcing for Accounting. Daniel designs and operates a number of specialty-focused SME-driven recruiting organizations.
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