Expanding your company’s international reach can become a priority for a variety of different reasons. Some of the most common ones include:

• Having your own overseas clients and needing to better support them. A good example of this is international tech support.
• Looking to acquire global talent like skilled foreign professionals distributed globally.
• Sales growth. Many companies want to expand to enter new markets and see potential trading activity.

However, many companies end up trying to go too far, too fast, with poor results. Here’s how to avoid that fate.

Setting The Stage For Incremental International Expansion

Incremental expansion is key when trying to build up your company “the right way” in new markets. In fact, if you’re on a limited budget, it may be the only want to balance efficiency and effectiveness. For the most part, companies that want to get into a new global market, especially smaller firms, begin with independent sales agents. Each of these agents will work with local customers, with a list of clients on-site. From there, they are ready to promote and offer your product/services.

Your average independent agent works on commission, just like an independent contractor may bid for a job. As a result, the company ends up only paying based on the volume of sales that the agent makes. This is a positive, but the major drawback is the risk that comes with your reliance on an independent professional. If the said agent decides to leave the country or not to work with you anymore, you lose all the headway with those clients. You can’t even pick up where they left off with a new agent, because they have the client list, data, and connections.

The Need For A Global EOR Service Provider

So, what’s the best fit for a company with those needs? Some may recommend starting your own local subsidiary, but this is expensive and time-consuming. A global employment company/EOR service is the perfect match, allowing companies to get started, while keeping things small. The unique solution that Acumen offers allows you to onboard and payroll a global sales force in 190 different countries, as employees, versus independent sales agents/contractors. As a result, you don’t have to worry about factors like legal compliance or losing client data/intellectual property. A proper PEO company keeps you safe, with a lighter footprint. Using a third-party foreign employment, incorporating in the countries with the highest growth potential. In addition, this service allows you to legally bring on a new team without having to actually own any companies abroad.

As a result, if you’re looking to grow international business slowly, business process outsourcing (BPO), is a great asset. For example, say that you were breaking into a new market, but only needed 15 sales agents as employees to start. An EOR in this initial stage will allow you to stay compliant while you begin to make a headway and amass clients. After that, if you’re happy with your progress, you can begin to open up your own entity. Another advantage of note here is that if you’re not happy with progression, it’s a lot easier to withdraw, with minimum commitment. In essence, employee leasing allows you to test out a market before deciding to incorporate.

Say that companies understand that they will eventually need to incorporate. It still may pay to wait. Different countries have their own idiosyncrasies when it comes to labor regulations and other laws. An EOR allows you to walk that balance between starting operations and engaging your sales force on-site while still learning how business in the new country really works. Many companies fail due to not understanding the local business culture. However, a good EOR service already knows how this works, and can be an invaluable resource during this initial period. In theory, you could have a flexible yet compliant way to set up internationally overnight.

Overall, an employment outsourcing solution is going to be your best option to start building in overseas markets without the additional expense and headache of a new company branch. For the ideal option here, be sure to use Acumen International is your ideal choice. We service 190 different countries, allowing you to stay compliant without the added need to open a business entity. We also serve as a one-stop-shop for services when you do get established through hiring and paying foreign people, from office rent, housing, car and mobile phone provision to training support.

Reach out to us today for more information.

Some of the largest and most successful teams in business today, especially the tech world, are global teams. These include names like:

• Zapier
• Stripe
• Buffer
• Github
• Stack Overflow

Opting for a globally distributed workforce over your conventional on-site teams provides a variety of benefits. These include:

Being able to quickly augment your in-house teams. If you need a specific skill-set for a project, simply hire the best fit rather than being limited geographically.

Speed. Because you have a larger selection to work from, and can do the onboarding process remotely, you spend less time hiring and more time reaping the benefits of your new hire.

Diversity. The ability to recruit from across the world allows for new perspectives and backgrounds to enhance your knowledge.

More expertise. Remote work is a perk that many employees are willing to make concessions for. If you can provide it, you have the ability to draw in top skilled talent at a fraction of the conventional cost.

More efficiency. Remote workers have been proven to be up to 20% more productive when they have the ability to handle creative projects on their own. This isn’t just a matter of perception, but proven facts. The global workforce has evolved, with more workers not being at their desks than they are actually at the desk while working.

However, despite all these benefits, there is a logistical roadblock that can keep employers from getting the most out of their remote teams. Here’s a way to further efficiency, without any compliance risks.

Issues In Global Team Management

When we look at the biggest issues regarding globally distributed teams, remote management and communication are generally at the top. After all, you don’t have the liberty of paging someone in the same building or even walking over to their office. However, there’s a bevy of online tools available, such as Zoom and Skype, that help further communication across the board in these settings. Along with these, you can take advantage of advanced HR software to help in terms of quick reporting, task-setting and management, no matter where anyone is based.

If you are looking to add an international team, perhaps as a part of incremental development as a startup, a global EOR solution may be the ideal fit for you. Business process outsourcing is something that becomes more common as companies grow and enter new markets. However, an EOR solution lets you take advantage of employee leasing without the costs of opening a new branch in your new market.

Equally important is having a way to hire and pay offshore teams. Failing to properly categorize your employees when handling payroll and tax comes with heavy fines, and potentially blocking you out of the international market in the future. You need a partner with the global expertise and knowledge to provide compliance and addressing issues that do arise.

Getting Support

Because of how difficult the above factors can be to juggle, when you need to augment in-house teams with skilled offshore workforce without costly subsidiaries, it’s best to do this all through a third party. By working with a global employer of record (EOR), you can stay fully compliant when setting up your remote team. Combine the saved costs on brick-and-mortar offices with the higher efficiency of most remote workers, and you get a great ROI with these third parties.

If you happen to inherit a globally distributed team, or create your own, working with a global PEO company is a major asset. By being a factual employer, you have someone to handle onboarding and cut down on legal/HR liability for your globally distributed personnel. If you are looking for an option here, Acumen is your ideal choice. We can help you keep compliant while working to build a globally distributed team, servicing 190 different countries. Along with this, we are able to provide a one-stop-shop solution to help with your infrastructure on remote sites, including:

• Office rent
• Internet provision
• Laptops
• Mobile phones
• Training support

Reach out to us today for more information.

When it comes to finding a way to legally engage an international workforce, it’s essential to have a concrete and organized plan in place. The stakes in terms of fines and tarnishing a public image can be huge when it comes to not properly classifying and servicing your employees. However, on the other end of the equation, setting up a local entity can take a heavy toll in terms of expense and time, making it a non-feasible option for everyone.

The two options that generally come up as an intermediate solution are a global PEO (professional employment organization) service provider or global employer of record (EOR). While they may sound similar, they are not interchangeable. Here’s a closer look at the differences, and what may be best for which situation.

The Fundamentals On PEO

In the U.S., your average PEO service functions as a co-employment arrangement form. Essentially, this allows smaller or medium-sized businesses to provide benefits at the same level as larger organizations. This manifests as:

• Better rates on health insurance
• Worker’s compensation
• State unemployment

Your PEO partner in this case, would also have shared employer risk with you. As an example, PEOs can ensure that when you terminate an employee, you are on safe legal ground when doing so. They can also help provide added legal protection if a business is dealing with employee lawsuits.

Global PEOs were invented as an expansion of this concept to apply to an international workforce. The scope is also wider regarding function, as it can also cover on-site employment as well as the provision of employee benefits.

So, with that in mind, what separates a PEO service from a global PEO solution? For one, PEOs become a co-employer of a company’s given workforce, meaning that the factual employer ultimately has partial legal liability for employer responsibilities, like reporting unemployment claims. However, for a global PEO, the employer doesn’t share a legal bond with the employees hired. Instead, the third party PEO provider acts as a legal employer on behalf of the factual employer. However, that same employer (the client) has full control over their global workforce.

However, in both cases, there are some issues that may arise when using a PEO service. Major drawbacks include:

• Losing control due to the terms of the co-employment arrangement
• Risks regarding cash flow. As a client, you would be reliant on how the PEO provider handles pricing, and have no say in the matter. You may have to end up suddenly paying more to maintain your work team
• All PEOs have their own sets of policies and benefits. This means you need to rigorously research a provider before committing

EOR Services As A PEO Alternative

Because of those drawbacks we mentioned earlier, there may be companies that need some support with international employment but don’t want to enter co-employment arrangements. Global EOR companies serve as the ideal fit here.

How do EOR companies work? These become the full legal employer of your business’s payrolled workers, rather than entering a co-employment relationship. As a result, the global EOR company is completely responsible for items including:

• Payroll
• Taxes
• Payroll compliance
• Administration of benefits
• Reporting unemployment claims

It’s important that you understand the different terminology that you may see while looking for these services. A global PEO and a global EOR service are terms that can be used interchangeably. These describe the same processes in terms of international workforce onboarding, compensation, and termination if needed. An EOR service can take place both internationally and domestically. If the employer has no legal ties to the employees, it counts.

With this in mind, what are some of the ideal fits for a global EOR? These are ideal for growing companies, specifically:

• Companies expanding globally and looking specifically for skilled talent, as opposed to immigration services that only use unskilled talent.
• Teams looking to enter new markets for extra revenue/taking advantage of global business trends.
• Companies working to deploy an overseas workforce/send expat teams abroad to give tech support for their international clients.

How Should You Outsource A Global Workforce Management Function?

A global EOR service can be a key for powering and facilitating your international expansion and operations. However, this only happens if you find a strong partner to do so. In terms of a global EOR solution, Acumen International is your ideal choice. We’re the fastest on the market when it comes to international employee onboarding, handling both expats and locals in 190+ of our covered countries.

Counter to other global EOR solutions, we offer great flexibility regarding the number of employees able to handle even the smallest jobs (1 employee for a 1-month project duration). Combined with this flexibility, we also offer a wide range of employee benefits, including:

• Rental cars
• Office rentals
• Housing
• Relocation for dependents
• Internet provision on-site
• Medical insurance and others

These factors combine to help ensure independent contractor compliance and payroll, as well as creating a benefits package that will help you entice the top international talent internationally.

Reach out to us today for more information.

Estonia is a small country on the Baltic Sea coast. It’s being the sixth year in a row this European Union member wins a trophy for the best tax code across the OECD countries. The International Tax Competitiveness Index is seen as the rating indicator covering two major aspects of tax policy – competitiveness and neutrality. Both these aspects reflect the ease of doing business, and in the case of Estonia, they became a benchmark of the digital nomads’ hub.

An intricate path to Victory

Creating favorable investment conditions made possible due to the adoption of advanced technologies into the entire social, economic, and governance aspects of Estonian life. Implementation of electronic standards took nearly two decades with the continuous approaching to raising challenges and problems. In fact, Estonia appears as one of the first countries who declared in 2001 Internet access as a genuine human right. Today, 99% of public services in Estonia are available online. One of the most complicated difficulties on their way to becoming e-society was internet education, as the adoption of e-services required snug confidence in digital practices. The path from 29% of Internet users at early stages to 98% as of 2019.

Economy, taxes, and e-residence

Surviving the aftershocks of Soviet intervention, Estonia managed to modernize and liberalize its practices in order to engage the international standards of living. The estimated GDP per capita in 1991, just after the independence declaration, was as little as $100, while the present data shows a significant, near $20,000 flag.

The modern Estonian economy demonstrates a solid growth due to consistent electronics and telecommunication sectors, strong trading ties, and encouraging investment climate. Loyalty and flexibility, alongside with digital convenience of the state tax system turned Estonia into the hotbed of the technological enterprise. Despite the low rates, taxation delivers a meaningful revenue in the amount of 33.2% of GDP to the Estonian economy. This number, however, continues to decrease.

E-Governance proposed as an innovative administration method plays an essential role in the country’s international relations. It is so effective that even Malaysia and other big countries have adopted this model. The e-residence program launched in 2014 allows foreigners to enter Estonian services, such as banking, company formation, payment operations, and taxation within online. During its lifetime, the amount of 54 thousand participants from over 160 countries have established more than six thousand new companies.

Potential threats

There is a number of threats that innovative digitalization of the Estonian economy involves besides benefits. Two of them are likely to be determined as principal. Here they are:

• Cybersecurity
• Tough response to global economic fluctuations

Total digitalization of economic and governmental systems made Estonia vulnerable to cyberattacks, especially those implemented by international hacker organizations, including politically backed. In 2007, the major Estonian public websites and databases became a target for such offense. State-Sponsored cyberwarfare, as it was defined later, become the second biggest cyberattack on government institutions after the US “Titan Rain” in 2003.

The X-Road, main Estonian data storage system, is thereby used by NATO, the US Department of Defense, and major EU institutions, so in case of occurrence, a cybersecurity issue to be confronted by multiple counterparts.

As long as the Estonian economy is tied to international trading, global markets may have a severe impact on it. Back in 2008, the global economic crisis hit many countries, Estonia was among those suffered worse. It took two years to move the economy back on track.

Latest updates and key takeaways from Estonia

Recently, Estonia and Hong Kong have settled an agreement aimed at these jurisdictions to avoid double taxation, as they together propose a loyal tax approach. According to the deal, any tax paid by Hong Kong residents derived from in-Estonia activities to be credited against the local tax withheld on the same amount of income, and vice versa.
The other notion applied in 2019 is that it became possible to pay yourself employee salary only, but only in case, the business activity was performed outside Estonia. However, the inhouse tax still needs to be repaid.

Taxation in Estonia: key takeaways

• Corporate income tax rate: 20%
• Individual income tax rate: 20%
• Property tax applies only to the land
• Foreign profit exemption (up to 100%)

Despite the ease of business establishment in Estonia, there is a set of formal rules, a cornerstone for legitimate enterprise in this country. Here are some of them:

• Double taxation of salaries for non-digital nomads
• A EUR 40,000 turnover threshold for VAT registration
• Social security contribution and payroll for Estonian residents

More on e-residence and taxation in Estonia here

For your convenience, when it goes about compliant employment in Estonia, we created an efficient approach, Express Global Employment solution. This will reduce the need for studying and examining local legislation wittingly to hold on specific Labour Code and Taxation.

Reach out to us today for more information.

Let’s start this conversation with a few key statistics about startups and their survival.

On average, 80% of startups manage to make it to their second year.

• 70% make it to the third year.
• 62% make it to the 4th year.
• This drops to 52% in the 5th year.

Many people may be surprised to see this information, given that it’s a common belief that many businesses don’t survive that 1st year. Startups are a bit different. In order to make good on the initial investment that you make, a startup needs to be able to put its concepts into action. The key is having essential talent in place. Ultimately, you can have a great startup concept and ride that potential to a successful year or two, but without talent, that ultimately dwindles. So, with that in mind, here’s how you can make the most use of professional employment solutions for startups.

What Makes Talent A Top Priority For Startups

Part of the reason why talent is so essential for startups, aside from filling that need, is the fact that there are simply more openings to fill. What this means is that there is a general decrease in the amount of agricultural, industrial, and similar labor-based jobs. Startups generally aren’t having these types of vacancies, either. The highest areas of growth are generally areas like tech that require skilled, specialized talent. In one survey, the following skills were labeled as a top priority in hiring.

• Cloud/distributed computing
• Statistical analysis
• Data mining
• Middleware and integration software
• Web architecture and development
• UI design

This is mainly because even if you’re not a tech company, you still need a lot of these skills, like being able to construct and manage a website/app, or being able to collate and access data to guide business decisions. The fact that nearly every startup needs some of these assets is creating a “talent war”. Businesses are pulling out all the stops to make their companies more attractive to candidates with these key skills.

Startups And Employee Retention

Along with being able to draw in top talent, it’s also important to have a strategy to retain them. The startup life can be difficult, and turnover might be even more common here than in conventional business settings. There’s also a very tangible cost element to failing to retain your talent. The cost of turnover is roughly 2.5 times that of employment, but that’s not all. Startups need to position their company and products in the best possible light for potential investors, and a lot of that is a concrete team. If you present one team and then have to present a different one later, or can’t showcase the best talent you want because you can’t retain them, this hurts your startup’s image.

One silver lining here is that if you can get strong talent across the board, this helps your retention. Skilled employees are smart enough to recognize other talented professionals, and this gives them more confidence that your startup knows what it takes to succeed. Talent is your most valuable asset in more ways than one.

How To Attract Top Talent

So, with that in mind, every startup needs to have a talent acquisition strategy in place. This includes not only how to appeal to talent, but the actual logistics of hiring and employing them. For example, full-time employment may seem like the obvious option, but it may not be financially feasible to bring on every single employee full-time at the beginning of a startup.

This is why we see a lot of freelancers getting employed by startups. These professionals can have all the skills and experience you need, but you need to make sure that you are legally compliant with how you bring them on. Depending on where you are based and the actions you take, you may think you have an independent contractor, but they are truly an employee. Failing to file this properly can lead to consequences for your business.

With the heavy competition for local and domestic talent, you may need to think broader, especially if you have international expansion plans. This is where global employment services for startups comes in. A global PEO solution is a perfect way for you to make use of an international marketplace of talent, without exposing yourself to the web of international labor law.

PEO Providers For Startups and the Future of Employment

In many ways, the startup world is a proving ground for a lot of concepts that ultimately end up shaping the general workplace. The sink-or-swim nature of business at this stage means there’s always going to be some innovations required, both in terms of product and how the business is run.

As a result, to have the talent needed to power these areas, startups can’t afford to limit themselves in terms of talent. To open up a pool of international skilled workers, without the red tape of opening your own entity, it’s essential that you consider a PEO for startups. PEO (professional employment services) from a skilled industry partner like Acumen International can help you compliantly hire and retain the talent your startup needs to survive and thrive.

Reach out to us today for more information.

When it comes to international business, one of the main benefits is being able to go where the strongest markets are, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a Middle Eastern market like Saudi Arabia. As the largest oil producer in the world and the only Arab country to be a part of OPEC and the G-20 major economies, the opportunities are vast. However, this is also quite a unique setting when it comes to international expansion. So, with that being said, here are some of the fundamental points when it comes to opening a business in Saudi Arabia without incorporation.

Understanding Business In The Middle East

When it comes to Middle Eastern business in general, while there are plenty of opportunities, these may not necessarily be the right opportunities for every company. A good way to gauge whether it’s a proper fit is through a pros or cons analysis. Here are some of the outstanding factors that may make the Middle Eastern expansion decision for you.

Pros:
Relative communication accessibility. While local languages may be the official languages, English is widely spoken in the business world here. For example, in Saudi Arabia, it’s often a compulsory subject in secondary schooling. This can make it easier for your team to discuss and negotiate than in other Gulf countries.
Economic development. Many people associate business in the Middle East with oil, and this resource has created a platform for other areas of the business to develop as well.
Proximity. The Middle East’s proximity to European, Asian, and African markets could make it a potential good staging point if expansion there is in your future goals.

Cons:
Overspecialization. Countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia are doing a solid job of diversifying business outside of the oil and gas industries, but not every country is as successful in this regard yet.
Cultural adjustment. While this isn’t necessarily a business issue, cultural norms are quite different in the Middle East compared to many Western businesses. You want to be mindful of these so you can network successfully.
Universal challenges. Like any international expansion, you have to heed the laws not only in your country of origin, but also the country that you do business in. This includes everything from export to hiring to labor practices. You need to do your research to make sure that the pros outweigh the opportunity costs of making this adjustment.

How Easy Is It To Do Business in Saudi Arabia?

In general, Saudi Arabian business mitigates a lot of the cons that we mentioned, while being a shining example of the pros. As of right now, its CPI (consumer price index) is at 106.1 points. Primary exports are oil products, as is little surprise, with major imports being foodstuffs, machinery, and automobiles.

However, there are still those universal logistical/compliance challenges that you need to navigate.

For example, when talking about taxes, there are two types in Saudi Arabia, income tax and Zakat. Non-Saudi investors and Saudi branches of foreign companies are susceptible to income tax, which is at a higher rate than Zakat. Note that businesses involved in gas and oil are subject to higher income taxes as well. Selling your shares in a Saudi branch as a foreign investor is also subject to additional tax.

Perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of Saudi business to newcomers is what’s actually required to open the business up. Law requires that you have a local partner with a controlling interest of the company. Because this would technically allow them to close the business whenever they feel like it, you need to make sure that you work with someone you trust. You also need to prove that you have a certain amount of money to invest, though this varies by state.

Say that you can navigate this issue. What about labor laws? In general, Saudi labor laws entail similar provisions that you would see for Western workers, like set workdays, maternity leave and the like. In general, there have been a series of reforms over the last decade or so to make things more appealing for foreign investment. In terms of regulation for expat employment in Saudi Arabia, you will need to register with a variety of local administrations, and it’s customary for the government to hold your passport until you are ready to leave the country.

Prepping For International Expansion Into Advanced Economies

Saudi Arabia is a very desirable location for any company to expand operations into, given the strong economy and continued potential for growth. Because of its already-developed economy and the ongoing international need for oil, chances are that Saudi Arabia is going to be a financial powerhouse for decades to come.

However, advanced economies like these often have unique challenges and regulations to navigate before any of that can happen. This is why it’s important to avoid the bureaucratic headache of opening your own entity and look into PEO in Saudi Arabia. PEO (professional employment services) from a skilled industry partner like Acumen International ensures that you quickly and effectively hire on the team you want for your Saudi Arabian expansion, while always knowing you will be staying in compliance.

Reach out to us today for more information.

For most companies, intellectual property is the lifeblood of their business, whether it’s a major product that they sell or a cornerstone of their branding. As a result, potential issues like copyright infringement are taken very seriously. However, things start to get a bit murkier when we look at international intellectual property management. Different countries may have different laws, making it difficult to determine what applies to what situation. In addition, many international teams are comprised of freelancers, making it difficult to determine exactly who owns a given IP. Here is some key insight on navigating this web with your intellectual property ownership.

Intellectual Property Concerns In The Global Marketplace

The growing importance of intellectual property is due to an overall shift in business focus over the last few decades. In the past, a lot of the value of a company may have been tied up as tangible items, like office space, equipment, and so on. Now, though, it’s the intangible concepts that carry the bulk of importance. This includes concepts like:

• Products/processes
• Written/creative work
• Designs
• Logos/visual branding
• Trade secrets

Indeed, if you were to follow a given company and ask its patrons what they value, they’re likely going to say it’s either the end product, marketing method, or the method they go about their business. All of this falls under intellectual property. The bulk of the time, this is a key part of businesses managing to stay on the cutting edge.

However, this doesn’t mean that intellectual property issues don’t happen. A lot of the time, this becomes a legal question of who is entitled to an idea under the law. For example, there is an ongoing issue between the U.S. and China about Chinese companies stealing American IP en masse. This is largely believed to be due to a lack of enforcement on the Chinese end. This highlights a major issue with intellectual property in the global marketplace. If two different countries have two different sets of IP standards and enforcement, how can one enforce their IP elsewhere?

Intellectual Property Ownership And Global Employment

This brings us to intellectual property ownership in an employment context. Conventionally, when an employee is hired on at a company, they either have to sign an agreement regarding IP or sign an employment agreement with relevant clauses included. In essence, this means that when they create a piece of intellectual property in the service of the company, the rights to it revert to the company, rather than the person. This way, if the worker ends up leaving the company later on, they don’t end up taking the property with them.

However, when going into an international context, this becomes a lot more difficult. Expanding operations into a new country means having to go through the local bureaucracy as well as having to deal with taxes in the new area. Many companies try to work around this by hiring international freelancers in order to start their initial operations in new markets. The problem is that if there’s no employment agreement in place, it suddenly becomes a lot less clear who exactly owns a piece of intellectual property the employee creates. In addition, if you try to put one together as an employer, it may be rejected due to labor laws in the country you’re trying to work in.

To avoid being caught in this situation, you want to look at services like a Global Employer of Record as an alternative. Agreements with independent contracts are generally made on a case-to-case basis. By comparison, a GEOR agreement affords the employers all the rights of a conventional employer/employee relationship. So, if a disgruntled employee were to try and claim ownership of an IP after leaving your company, you could reference the GEOR agreement to protect yourself. Technically, they would be a legal worker for the service, but all IP they would create would revert to your company.

A Solution To Your Global Intellectual Property Issues

There have been several debates throughout history on whether or not the employee or the employer has rights to a given piece of intellectual property. If there isn’t a written agreement in place, it can be even more difficult to determine this, as both parties may have a cause behind their claims. Part of the reason that this is so difficult with international markets is due to the high prevalence of freelancers. Freelance contracts are often different and less stringent than employment contracts, leading your valuable intellectual property under dubious ownership.

In general, handling employment and compliance internationally can be more complex than many companies expect. However, this doesn’t mean that you should pass over it completely, considering the advantages of international expansion. At Acumen International, our services are specifically designed to help international companies avoid many of these issues. Foreigners are able to maintain their intellectual property rights in international business, no matter what type of members they decide to bring on their team. Along with this, it’s also a lot faster than the other alternative, setting up a foreign entity.

Reach out to us today for more information.

As a base of operations, France is an appealing place to do business, though many people aren’t taking advantage. To add some perspective, France:

• Has access both to a market of 65 million consumers and the greater EU market of 500 million consumers.
• Is far less expensive to operate from compared to the U.S. or U.K.
• Has several measures favorable to business, like the research tax credit.

With this in mind, hiring an expatriate in France allows you to get the best of both worlds. You have a favorable business environment, combined with the exact staff you want working at your company. Here’s how to make this happen.

Issues With Expat Hiring

In many cases, companies want to bring on expats for their specialized expertise, ability to work in a global economy, and to not have to compete with larger local companies. However, there are also several difficulties associated with bringing on an expatriate employee, even if they are from your business’s country of origin and coming over while you expand to France. Here are some of the major issues involved.

Visas: A person looking to work in France will need a long-stay visa equivalent to a residence permit, should they plan on working in the country longer than 3 months. As an employer, you need to work with the French government to provide essential documentation like:

• The application form itself.
• Proof of insurance.
• A guarantee of repatriation.
• Evidence for the reasons and conditions of the stay.
• A criminal check and medical evaluation upon arriving in France, in some situations.

Another alternative here is the EU Blue Card Visa. This is a EU-wide work permit that allows highly skilled non-EU citizens to work in France and other countries, expats included. However, there’s a set of very stringent requirements, including:

• Valid certification of university-level education.
• Proof of experience in professional practice.
• At least one-year work contract.
• Evidence of monthly salary sum of more than 1.5 that of the average French annual salary (around EUR 56,900).

This process can be quite time-consuming, and application does not guarantee you will be able to get a visa. To put things in perspective, any employer or organization in France looking to hire an expat needs to request authorisation from the French authorities. They need to apply for work permits two months before the expat’s due data at minimum. In addition, they also need to submit proof of having attempted to find local candidates through local agencies. This is one of the biggest roadblocks to getting foreign worker permits approved.

In 2015, France tried to streamline the process with its “Talent Passport” program, providing a renewable 4-year visa/residence permit. However, these are generally limited to internationally known individuals, performers, and highly qualified employees.

Your Expat Hiring Solutions

As you can see, all of these issues can pose major hurdles for a company trying to bring on the top professionals possible. One way that some of these companies try to avoid the problem is by setting up their own entity in France. While this is effective, it’s also rather complicated. You need to choose a business structure and tax setup to start, the same as you would in the U.S. However, you also need to file an application, and possibly even take a business administration course before you can start operations. Many businesses don’t have the time or resources to go through this.

The alternative here is using a Global Employer of Record (GEOR). This provides an alternative to the bureaucracy of opening up a French subsidiary of your company just to bring on the employees you want. The way this works is that the GEOR serves as the registered legal employer for the worker. As a result, the GEOR takes the responsibility of:

• Immigration requirements
• Payroll
• Maintaining foreign employment

Your company, on the other hand, gets to manage:

• Compensation
• Performance
• Assigned Duties
• Termination

If you’re looking for a Global Employer of Record solution, Acumen International is the strongest option available. Whether you are looking for a long-term solution to keep your expat hires in compliance with French law, or just looking for an interim solution while establishing an entity in France, we have you covered. Spend less time navigating work permits and other issues and more time on running your business.

Using our experience and expertise, you can efficiently onboard expat professionals as quick as 72 hours after submitting your request. This means:

• Lower employment risk
• Able to start projects faster to beat out the competition
• Having an emergency option for time-critical situations

Reach out to us today for more information.

What Is an International Umbrella Company

Our Umbrella Services are for those who having worked with non-compliant umbrella company, are currently questioning the worthwhileness of using an umbrella company at all, those who are tired of the whole taxation, accountancy and administrative hassles that come with working as an independent contractor, and those who want to play globally but do not want to involve in the costly processes of setting up a limited company. If you are among those who are bothered about speediness, are cost-driven and enjoy the certainty of compliance, then these solutions are certainly for you.

Our Umbrella Services are all about YOU, PROMPTITUDE & 100% COMPLIANCE!

Why Use An Umbrella Company?

From the staffing/recruiting agencies’ perspective, to hire a group of contractors, like programmers for instance, abroad to accomplish an urgent project can seem disorderly and difficult to control because of distance, language and cultural barriers, not to mention, the payroll and administrative procedures involved.

The pros and cons of using an umbrella company

As mentioned earlier, working for an umbrella company could feel like you’re giving back some of the control that you previously had over your work. Another way of looking at it is that it actually gives you a lot more freedom to relax and concentrate on your client.

Some of the advantages of joining an umbrella include:

• No commitment
• Less administration
• Keep employee benefits

What are the disadvantages?

There are, obviously, also drawbacks to working for an umbrella company which you should be aware of before you decide. These include:

• Fees
• Less Independence
• Fewer Tax Breaks

Our Umbrella Services help you avoid all these hassles and to concentrate on what you do best by taking the burden of all the paper work and processing when dealing with your contractors on your behalf. Besides saving your time and money, our Umbrella Services will free you of the often unexpected local compliance risks and keep you protected from any legal problems when dealing with your contractors.

As an independent contractor or freelancer, Acumen International, by virtue of our Umbrella solutions, will take up the responsibilities of invoicing your client(s), promptly paying you for the jobs done, while compliantly taking care of the tax and other national contributions involved, hence leaving you to focus on what you know how to do best.

With these Umbrella solutions, you are sure to avoid the huge risks of having to make additional payments on tax bills, on penalties and on interest. Moreover, you will have no worries whatsoever about your reputation been besmirched.

Employment outsourcing | PEO services provider

For the first time in history, there are more jobs than people to fill those jobs! Clearly, getting the right employees is critical to the rise of a business. Nowadays, however, there has been a shift in a paradigm of decisions that lead up to employment. Not least among the reasons for that stand the existing so called skills crisis as well as a changing skills landscape, – the world’s top business leaders note.

Today, employees need to demonstrate good communication skills if they want to be promoted by their current employers. At CISCO, for example, all the decisions about promotions are based on the quality of communication and presentation skills. Those who demonstrate at least 4 on a 5-point scale are considered as candidates for promotion. The logic here is simple: promotion always means managing people or managing a large number of people. The skill of communicating with people (and not just that of doing part of your job well) becomes principal. Employers value communication skills because they allow employees to tailor their language up to the audience they are addressing, work properly in groups and write clearly and concisely.

Organizations able to boast their employees with strong soft skills that let them listen, collaborate with others, communicate with team members and present ideas have healthy, cooperative and productive workplaces. In the blog published at Vervoe soft skills – emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills like communication and empathy – are defined as the Holy Grail of recruiting and seen as a better predictor of success than hard skills. So, we highly recommend you to attract and retain exactly those people who have good communication skills.

Beside soft skills that are curtailed in the era of digitalization, specific hard skills need to be developed and applied in completely new – future – ways. Below we list a few insights, mainly from World Economic Forum in Davos 2019 on developing and applying both sets of skills. These are to help businesses like YOURS take your companies to a new level.

Attract and Retain employees smarter than you. All along, entrepreneurs were slaves to the misconception that the leader of a company should be the smartest to control the flock. However, this assumption has long been cast aside with the world best leaders admitting that to experience growth, you should hire more intelligent people than yourself. As soon as you go ahead and embrace smarter people in your organization, you prevent slowing your organization by your own limitations. By hiring smarter team members, you can build up your business with the strengths backed by the thoughts and ideas of these smart individuals. Rule number one: help people to be better than you are.

Employ based on skills not on geography. Previously, companies had been limited to hoping they could find team members with the right skill sets, in the right locations. Today, geographic limitations should be the least of your worries when it comes to global employment. By having more skilled people, your progress will surely skyrocket as you will finish projects faster and innovation will always be ongoing. Thanks to innovative Global Employer of Record (GEOR) Services companies can now hire and compensate the right talent with the right skill sets anywhere in the world, without having to open own legal entities or worry about bureaucratic red tape in these target countries. Not only are you able to get the right team but acquire the best from all over the world. Rule number two: skills are crucial today, and even more important than borders.

Invest in training your team and your employees. In today’s competitive world it’s not limited to only having smart and skilled employees. Investing in employee training is critical for you to reap much sweeter fruits in the future. By providing corporate training to your overseas team, you can install in them your culture and align them all to the company’s goals.

By using a GEOR service you as an actual employer can deliver any needed training to your team overseas. We, at Acumen International, provide a risk-free, fast and reliable global employment solution, we employ foreign workers on your behalf. Our goal is to make it easy for your business to expand to overseas markets and retain the best world’s talent by providing a 100% compliant international employment service. Thus, you are free to focus on developing your strategy, updating your employees’ overall skills, fostering and transferring your company culture overseas.

What is International PEO, how did it appear and what differs it from other methods of hiring and compensating foreign workers? On a basic level, global PEO service or global employment outsourcing, umbrella and payroll services are precisely what it sounds like: a third party provider that helps businesses expand globally and/or strengthen their internal teams with global talent by hiring and payrolling international workers on their behalf.

Notwithstanding the similarities among the three methods, you’ll probably nevertheless use each of them in different situations to help meet the three very different needs you may have. It is advisable to carefully analyze the differences between the three solutions in order to choose the best option.

Umbrella companies take care of payments to independent contractors. Ideally the contractors need to be self-employed in order to get paid via an umbrella company. Umbrella company however cannot onboard workers on its payroll. Umbrella companies don’t make arrangements to ensure workers welfare is well taken care of during the time they are on their assignments. Besides, they do not decide with the employer to offer parental or holiday leaves. Their objective is only payments. In terms of Umbrella company, it acts as employer to different individual contractors and pays them through PAYE (pay-as-you-earn), that is the employees’ salaries are first taxed before the payments.

Most of payroll service providers will do monthly salary payout to your employees on your behalf. However, you will need to be a legal employer that would bear all employment risks while outsourcing the payroll function. Using Payroll provider services, the client’s employees do not become the payroll provider’s employees. It’s an option suitable for companies that need to outsource the accounting tasks.

With international PEO solution, you can legally employ and compensate global workforce in literally any country of the world without the need to be a legal employer and/or open your own company to hire foreign personnel. In other words, you can outsource a complete global HR cycle and grant the risks and effort to a PEO provider. Apart from paying all statutory contributions, you can provide additional benefits in order to retain top employees. A global PEO would handle for you all administrative costs, business travel, fuel expenses, accommodation, office rent, medical and life insurances, and pension fund deductions.

International PEO emerged as a reaction of the HR sphere to the development of the sharing economy that separated international employment from contracting workforces. Global PEO helps businesses that go global meet their growing hiring needs as easily as they would in their home countries. It has become a core of many international companies’ HR strategies in the sharing economy: global 100% compliance for talent beyond borders. The main advantage of Global PEO is that it helps companies with work permit and immigration support, which any other company doesn’t do, as the sponsor would need to employ the worker further after the work permit is issued. Moreover, it protects the overseas employee from any kind of mistreatment or any unpleasant coming from the employer.

Most successful businesses such as AMAZON, AIRBNB, and UBER use the business model of the sharing economy and so far, they are top in the industry. Ready to become a successful international company through our International PEO solution as an integral part of the sharing economy for the employment field? Let’s talk.

Moving to and living in Poland requires you to get credible information on everything from simple matters like whether you can bring your pets to Poland, to more complex issues such as how to obtain a legal work permit for your wife at the Cracow local government. Understanding all the necessary information can be a tedious, time-consuming and confusing process, especially for new expats.

Why is Poland economically attractive for expatriates?

Poland is strategically located in the heart of Europe and has a vibrant rapidly growing economy. Poland is the ninth-largest economy in Europe and has business-friendly opportunities and career options for expats. The country has become an attractive destination for multinational businesses from across the world who want to venture into one of the best-performing economies in Europe.

According to the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Survey for 2018, Poland’s business environment was ranked 27th out of the 190 countries that were surveyed at the time. The survey also concluded that Poland is number one in terms of ease of trading across borders and 22nd in resolving insolvency. When it comes to getting credit, it scored decent 29th position and 38th for registering property.

The procedure of receiving work permits

Poland allows the citizens of the EU, European Economic Area (EEA) countries (EU + Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein) and members of their families to work in the country without any special work permit.

The following categories of foreign nationals are also exempt from the obligation to obtain a work permit:

• Foreign nationals who have long-term EU resident status in Poland.
• Foreign nationals with a settlement permit.
• Refugees, people granted temporary protection and people granted “tolerated stay” status.

Representatives of other foreign nationals are released from the obligation to get a work permit under specific regulations.

If an individual is not a citizen of any of EEA countries or doesn’t fall into any of the above categories, he/she needs to apply for a work permit to legally conduct activities bringing him/her an income in Poland.

The immigration process of hiring and managing expatriates in Poland can be cumbersome. The procedure of getting a work permit to work as an expat in Poland takes from one to two months until entry into Poland. Additionally, it may take up to four months for the whole process to be completed.

The vital steps to getting a work permit in Poland are:

1. Application for an entry Visa
2. Entry to Poland
3. Application for a Blue Card.

The Blue Card is an EU-wide approved work permit allowing high-skilled non-EU citizens to work and live in any country within the European Union, excluding Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom. The applicant for a Blue Card must have a work contract or binding job offer with a salary of at least 1.5 times the average gross annual salary paid in the Member State. He/she should have a valid travel document (in specific cases a valid residence permit or a national long-term visa) and documents proving his/her relevant higher professional qualification.

In fact, your organization won’t be able to get an official work permit when hiring a foreign worker for the Polish market. That needs to be requested and sponsored by the worker’s future employer which should confirm the foreigner’s future employment. That is why in case a company needs to transfer an expat to Poland, contractual relations may not be enough and it will need to employ the worker as a full-time employee. The easiest and most risk-free way to do it is to outsource the services to the company that sponsors work permits. The company will act as the employer and provider of immigration services to the foreign worker. This will save the cost of setting up own business entity in the country to employ expatriate personnel.

Well, there is this easiest way for you.

As a global employment organization, Acumen International takes on responsibility for visa and work permit sponsorship for your expatriate personnel that we employ locally on your behalf after they’ve received a work permit in Poland. Acumen International has years of experience and the right expertise in helping businesses grow their international workforces. We offer a comprehensive solution that will manage all aspects of the well-being of your employees in Poland on your behalf to ensure that your company is compliant with local employment laws and regulations. This will give you an opportunity to focus on the management of your expatriate employees instead of wasting valuable time dealing with administrative affairs.

For more information on how to expand your company globally through Acumen International, contact us to discuss your specific needs with our knowledgeable team.

Abbreviated to GEOR, a global employer of record is a third-party organization that onboards its clients’ foreign employees locally in their target countries using its global infrastructure.  

Employees acquired in this way (GEOR employees) are officially registered as employees of the GEOR company, which handles legislation, tax compliance, global payroll, expats’ work permits and immigration support, and employment requirements. The actual employer maintains the substantive day-to-day working relationship with the global employee hired via a GEOR model.

The GEOR solution, also known as global employment outsourcing, allows companies to hire, compensate, and provide benefits to the talented foreign workforce that is key to their business. It helps them expand their business to (or operate in) an international market quickly, easily and with 100% compliance (for either compliance or convenience reasons).

GEOR acts as a legal and functional intermediary between the employer and foreign employee. It takes responsibility for the employee while leaving active employee management to the employer. International hiring processes are complicated and require detailed in-country legal and payroll logistics knowledge. The global employer of record takes up this challenge and handles all global HR issues on the client’s behalf.

Global Employer of Record Responsibilities

GEOR assumes more legal and financial responsibility for the employees, regardless of their country of residence and the number of employees under the agreement.

Unlike a local third-party employment service that would do that in one country (or a limited number of countries, or 190+ countries to meet your company’s global expansion needs), a global employer of record gets you covered anywhere in the world, which makes global employment outsourcing faster, easier, cheaper, and 100% compliant.

A global employer of record is responsible for the following tasks:

• Comply with host country labour laws and regulations.
• Facilitate acquiring of visas and work permits.
• Offer advice to the employer on foreign labour laws.
• Process legal work permits.
• Provide a legislation entity for compliance with local payroll.

Why seek a global employer of record solution?

A company can enjoy several financial and legal benefits from working with a global employer of record. The GEOR replaces several separate entities that would alternatively handle foreign workforce employment. Before the advent of GEOR, companies struggled with foreign labor adjustments, resulting in the hiring of expensive legal counsel and having to create their own expensive legal entities in each county.

Here are some of the benefits a company  with foreign labour can look forward to by deciding to use global employer of record solutions:

Work permits Immigration and visa processing.

Scrutiny and compliance with constantly volatile international immigration laws can be time-consuming and resource-wasting. GEOR is responsible for handling the processing of visas and work permits and meeting immigration laws and regulations. The global employer of record also ensures immigration compliance should changes be made while the employee is working locally.

No need to dive into country payroll nuances.

Payroll includes critical financial information such as deductible, tax and payable amounts.

A compliant payroll should accurately reflect these details according to set standards. In most cases, payroll is compliant with local standards for foreign employees. The GEOR handles payroll for the employer’s global employees eliminating the need to have different payroll interfaces for foreign employees on assignment or employment agreement.

No need for international branches and own international infrastructure setup

A different way to ensure compliance with foreign labour laws is to establish a subsidiary in a foreign country that complies with the country’s laws. This is a time-consuming, labor-intensive undertaking that would require expensive legal guidance. For most firms, this is not a viable option. The easiest solution is a GEOR service. The service takes care of all legal compliance, including work laws, to ensure legal foreign employment.

Single point of contact and consolidation of actions  single unified invoicing and reporting

No matter how large your international workforce may grow or how many countries they are in, your global employment outsourcing efforts can be much more successful and compliant through the use of a Global Employer of Record solution.

Whether you have one or one hundred global team members, your global employer of record solution provider will provide one monthly invoice that covers them all.

Transparent, easy-to-understand, unified billing.

Even if your global employment outsourcing efforts involve one hundred team members in one hundred different countries, your global employer of record provider will handle them all in one place.

A global employer of record is the easiest and fastest way to venture into international markets by hiring foreign sales teams or to utilize and reward top foreign talent who is instrumental in growing your business.

When considering other available alternatives, the advantages of using a global employer of record are overwhelming. GEOR reduces the company’s liabilities and exposures to misclassification risks and legal resources in the hiring process.

The main benefit apart from being a single access point to foreign labour is the time and cost savings along with 100% compliance.

Use the easy button for your global employment outsourcing initiatives, and use a global employer of record solution.

*The terms Global Employer of Record, also known as Global Employment Outsourcing, International Professional Employer Organization (PEO), and payroll solution, are often used interchangeably.

Multinational companies are often seen engaging self-employed contractors for their foreign-based business as opposed to hiring full-time employees for seemingly cost-effective reasons. By hiring a foreign independent contractor, a company escapes the responsibility of fulfilling financial-based employee benefits like health-care, sick leave, paid vacations and retirement benefits.

However, the long-term sanctions that come with foreign independent contractors are exponentially larger than any amount that the company may end up saving.

Some of these risks include but are not limited to the following:

• Owing to decreased organizational authority and absence of company culture, the contractor may not feel part of the team and may withhold necessary or valuable information.
• Loss of intellectual property that the contractor takes with themselves when they decide to leave or the contract ends
• Low employee retention owing to the fact that a contractor is not obligated to stay with the company, which forces the company to make replacements continuously. This includes time and efforts invested in advertising, interviewing, screening, hiring and onboarding the new worker.
• Losing top IT talent means losing an edge over your competitors.
• The legal hassles and penalties that may result when a contractor claims for employee benefits.

The Misclassification of Employees Lawsuits: Financial Costs

Misclassification of employees as independent contractors and vice versa is perhaps the riskiest outcome, especially for multinational companies in a foreign land who are unfamiliar with the domestic legal systems. This process gets complicated by the involvement of legislation of more than one country, both of which may have distinctive customary practices.

Locally, independent contractor mislabeling cases notoriously end up costing a hundred million dollars to companies.

Additionally, while it is clear what IRS’s six standards for classification of independent contractors are, another country’s standards may be entirely different and may include additional expensive grounds like mandatory thirteen-month pay, mandatory bonuses and contributions to unemployment funds. Some countries impose fines along with withholding tax in cases of mislabeling.

Switching to Full-time Foreign Employees Ensures Full HR Compliance

While turning self-employed independent contractors into employees initially increases the costs by an approximate of 30% (Steve Santiago, 2009), the aggregate increase in labor cost is exponentially lower because of employee retention and efficiently trained staff. (Biz Carson, 2015)

Additionally, a long-term staff allows better business growth as opposed to short-term contractors for the following reasons.

• Full-time employees devote full-time to the company’s project as opposed to part-time contractors.
• There is decreased staff turnover and higher employee retention.
• A business needs loyal ‘on-deck’ workers and a dedicated team of professionals to carry the tasks forward.
• Business longevity is directly linked with the fluidity with which employees can climb up the corporate ladder; something that gets hard to gauge with independent contractors.
• Businesses are better prepared for when someone unexpectedly resigns when it has a group of well-trained all-encompassing individuals, as opposed to contractors that are not as fully immersed.
• Hiring employees creates a company culture where everyone works as a team towards the same goal, as opposed to working with off-site and inconsistent contractors.

Hiring full-time global employees will not just reduce the prolonged monetary costs but increase employee retention and engagement, ensure full legal and HR compliance and consequentially protect your business against various risks and exposures linked with global hiring.

The Solution

Global Professional Employer Organization (PEO) Services can effectively help your multi-national company transition from self-employed foreign contractors to foreign employees with the minimum risks possible.
Global PEOs can help your business through the following crucial steps:

• Successfully switching to full-time, consistent and long-term foreign employees as opposed to foreign independent contractors.
• Providing compliance with domestic labor and employment laws, familiarity with the legal system and official nitty-gritty.
• Helping your business attract foreign IT professionals seeking stability and security of employment
• Aid your company in getting in touch with global IT talent in a fully compliant manner and retain them long-term, thus reducing employee turnover and increasing employee engagement.
• Making sure that your company’s intellectual property remains within the company.
• Allowing the company to make more profits because of their trained set of individuals that have a shared
  knowledge of the goals, and hence can easily transition from project to project.

As you can see, the positive aspects of utilizing a Global PEO that understands and complies with the laws and labor regulations of more than 180 countries without challenge. Additionally, securing global talent in a new market is pain-free and a seamless entrance into new countries, avoiding the pitfalls of both non-resident status, but HR concerns as well.

In a cutthroat marketplace as we have today, it is almost impossible for a business, especially IT-related to grow and compete effectively without a viable talent management strategy in place. In the same vein, considering the technical nature of IT profession, it is essentially important to hire and work with highly skilled specialists who have the required prowess to be engaged in your projects. Businesses – big and small – having realized the role of international IT talent in business continuity are beginning to look for every way possible to hire global IT specialists no matter where they live in the world. But having said that, global hiring is not without its challenges. One of the biggest challenges is the difficulty of finding, hiring, engaging and retaining the suitable IT professionals as the quality of IT expertise lies at the heart of any business success. Once you’ve found an IT specialist, you now need to figure out how you can pay them for work done so global hiring is compliant.

In this article, we will find out how Global Employer of Record can help IT professionals to attract, engage and retain the world’s best talent and soar their business internationally side by side.

Building an effective employer branding

Gone are days when the main factors for workforce acquisition are race, age, gender, and so forth. Employers are presently more concerned about building a strong diverse corporate culture where individuals of difference backgrounds, skill sets and experience can team up to produce more effective and productive team. With a global employer of record, aka international employment outsourcing solution in place, any IT workforce employers can easily build a strong diverse-collaborative culture which is not only identifiable by all job seekers, but can make them the envy of the top-notch skills.

Having a labor pool of top-notch talent

It can be very difficult, time demanding and expensive to expand globally, especially when it involves more than one country and/or projects when there is no labor pool of skills. Acumen International having that in mind has provided through her employer of record solution, the platform that guarantees a steady pool of global talent. With a global employer of record solution, Acumen International can employ your workforce – whom you have known his skill potentials – on your behalf to realize your project in any country of your choice thereby saving you the time needed to look for appropriate skills. Having your global workforce in reserve saves you the resources that would have been used to search, recruit, train and onboard new employees each time you want to implement a new project or expand to a new country, as well as the resources that could have been lost in bad recruits.

Eliminating employee turnover

Poor employee management usually leads to unfriendly working relationship, employees’ dissatisfaction, low level of motivation and commitment, workforce disengagement, low productivity, and consequently high rate of high employee turnover. Employees are more engaged and productive when they understand and share your vision, have a sense of connection with your company, and feel recognized/appreciated. Global Employer of Record solution helps to eliminate employee turnover by providing a platform that does not only provide the possibility to attract the best skills, but also to continually engage and ultimately retain them. This Employer of Record platform makes it possible for any IT company to easily share its company vision and values with its global workforce. Through these Employer of Record services, Acumen International’s friendly group of professionals ensures that your workforce remuneration package (salary, leave and bonuses) is duly payed, while taking care of their payroll/ taxation and compliance issues.

Expanding your global presence cost-effectively, time-effectively and compliantly (leverage our global infrastructure)

Acumen International has made it much more easier and cost effective for IT professionals to expand to any foreign market as quickly as possible. With an international employment outsourcing solution, IT specialists can leverage Acumen’s global infrastructure when entering any global market without having to set up their own entities. This simply saves time, money, resources and also guarantees compliance.

Working with sales representatives is often a fantastic way to scale your production capacity in a short period of time. However, there are some companies that work with sales reps on a fulltime basis. We want to provide a guideline on how to prevent employee misclassification for these individuals.

What’s the deal?

If a US court determines a case of employee misclassification then the company will be faced with liabilities such as back tax withholdings, due social security contributions, overtime hours, interest and penalties. If employee classification is determined outside the US then the company will additionally be liable for paid vacation days, mandatory benefits such as a thirteenth month pay, severance payment, notice pay and fines, which are often a combination of a lump sum + a percentage over total liabilities.

These are severe liabilities but luckily there are a few ways to prevent it.

1 Hire a local accountant to do all the tax fillings

Your sales rep may be the best in his field but he is often not a great administrator. An employee misclassification case can be triggered because tax authorities discover that there is something wrong with the tax payments. Tax authorities will start an investigation and if they believe this individual is a misclassified employee then they will call in the labor authorities.

More often the sales rep will go to the labor authorities by himself. A deteriorating working relationship with the client, coupled with the sight on a high severance payment, are often enough for the sales rep to make this step.

2 Check the criteria for employee misclassification

Criteria that determine employee misclassification differ per country. In a country such as Germany it is important that the revenue of the sales rep should come from multiple clients. If a German sales rep receives more than 80% of total revenue from one source then this will likely trigger an employee misclassification case. In countries such as the US it is more important to look whether the sales rep has his own website, business cards and other methods to promote his business.

The chances for employee misclassification are close to zero if the sales rep works for multiple clients and when the working relationship is only for a brief period of time. A sales rep that works indefinitely for one client is in the danger zone. In these cases, you should pay extra attention to the criteria per country.

3 Don’t work with fulltime sales reps

Sales reps are great to scale up sales in a short period of time. But when you want to retain this talent for an indefinite period then it makes more sense to employ this individual. Acumen International can employ your sales reps on your behalf. We would act as the employer of record, pay the wages, fill out the taxes and make sure everything is compliant with local labor laws.

One American company was working on a fulltime basis with an IT freelancer in Slovakia for approximately three years. The American HR director decided to contact Acumen International to employ this freelancer. The HR director feared that would risk an employee / independent IT contractor misclassification case sometime in the future.

We provided an offer to employ the Slovakian freelancer. However, the US finance department did not approve our proposal since it was higher than what they were currently paying the freelancer. An employee misclassification case did not seem imminent, so they decided not to act.

Half a year later the same company contacted us to employ the Slovakian freelancer. Our offer got approved but the freelancer refused to sign our employment agreement. In this half year, the relationship between the freelancer and the US company went sour. The freelancer decided to go to the labor authorities instead.

The US company had to register their own legal entity in Slovakia due to employee misclassification. We never heard the ultimate verdict but from communication with the HR director we understood that they risked paying the due social security taxes, vacation, severance payment and additional fines. The total claimed amount was approximately 70.000 EUR.

The ride-hailing service has long maintained its drivers are independent contractors. In a decision that could majorly impact the gig economy, British judges disagree.

A London court ruled Friday that Uber drivers should be classified as employees, rather than independent contractors. The decision could have serious ramifications on the ride-hailing company and its so-called “gig economy” brethren.

Uber’s current classification of drivers as contractors means the company isn’t responsible for many costs, including Social Security (in the US), health insurance, paid sick days, gas, car maintenance and much more. If all drivers are eventually deemed employees, Uber will have to pay for all of this, as well as manage a workforce of more than one million.

“This is a groundbreaking decision,” Annie Powell, a lawyer for the firm Leigh Day that represented UK Uber drivers, said in a statement. “It will impact not just on the thousands of Uber drivers working in this country, but on all workers in the so-called gig economy whose employers wrongly classify them as self-employed and deny them the rights to which they are entitled.

A UK court rules that Uber drivers should be classified as employees rather than independent contractors

Gig economy is a term given to the workforce in which someone is hired, usually through a digital marketplace, to work on demand, for a short-term engagement.

Founded in 2009, Uber offers a mobile app that lets passengers hail a ride from their phone. The company began operations in San Francisco and is now one of the world’s biggest ride-hailing services, operating in more than 450 cities in more than 70 countries.

Uber is also the highest-valued venture-backed company in the world with a valuation of $68 billion. Much of this valuation, however, is based on Uber’s ability to be profitable by running its ride-hailing platform. If the company has to pay for its drivers’ expenses, profits could diminish or costs could be transferred to passengers.

As discussions of driver classification arose over the past couple of years, Uber has always said that it classifies drivers as contractors because that’s what drivers want

“Tens of thousands of people in London drive with Uber precisely because they want to be self-employed and their own boss,” wrote Jo Bertram, Uber UK’s regional general manager, in an email to CNET. “The overwhelming majority of drivers who use the Uber app want to keep the freedom and flexibility of being able to drive when and where they want.”

In the US, Uber settled two similar lawsuits in April over the classification of drivers. The class action suits were brought in California and Massachusetts and involved roughly 385,000 drivers. Under the settlement agreement, Uber was allowed to continue classifying its drivers as independent contractors but had to pay $100 million to the drivers involved in the suit. The ride-hailing company also agreed to certain concessions, including giving drivers more information when they’re banned from the service, not terminating drivers at will and creating a “Driver Association” to address drivers’ concerns.

The London Central Employment Tribunal on Friday took these decisions a step further. The court said Uber drivers should be classified as employees, earn at least the national minimum wage and get paid vacations. The tribunal will hold another hearing to determine the amount of pay drivers should receive.

Uber said it is appealing the decision.

While this preliminary decision threatens Uber’s business model, it’s currently limited to only two drivers. Uber has more than 40,000 drivers in the UK. Lawyers for the two drivers said they intend to open the case up to those thousands of other drivers.

In the wake of Uber’s worker classification battles, several other on-demand companies have begun to rethink employee classification. The grocery-delivery startup Instacart said in June 2015 that it’s switching hundreds of its personal shoppers from contract workers to part-time employees. House-cleaning startup Homejoy said in July 2015 that it was permanently shutting down after being sued over the classification of its workers. Several similar lawsuits have also popped up against other on-demand companies, including Postmates, Handy, Shyp and Washio.

“The Uber ruling will demystify much rhetoric on the ‘gig economy’ being inherently liberating,” said Guglielmo Meardi, industrial relations professor at Warwick Business School in the UK. “Over recent years self-employment has increased, but often coming with very bad conditions, prompting fears that it was being used to bypass employment legislation.”

Would you like to know how you can eliminate the risk of employee / sales rep misclassification and other risks of working through foreign independent contractors?

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Source: www.cnet.com

Acumen International is the International Professional Employer Organization that can provide your growing company (local or foreign) with international PEO services, global employment and payroll solutions, as well as work permits or business visa issuances. In other words, signing up for our International PEO and Payroll solutions will guarantee that your or your client’s company payroll and taxes are fully managed by a team of experienced professionals.

With over 15 years of running global employment and payroll across 180+ countries around the globe, serving companies in IT & Telecommunications, FMCG, Oil & Gas, Construction & Engineering, Agriculture, Automotive, Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals, and other industries, Acumen International has gained practical experience and valuable expertise, along with a strong-built network that can help you maintain a highly satisfied workforce, while cutting down on your administrative HR tasks and all the risks involved at the same time.

In addition, our International PEO and Payroll package is an insurance against non-compliancy and inflexibility. With our PEO and Payroll solutions, you are certain to get in a quick and compliant way, payroll and employment documents preparation, employees and/or contractors onboarding, detailed payroll calculations (base salary, bonuses, sick-leave, business trips, holidays, etc.), completion of local tax payments and reports submission to local authorities, advanced reports, assistance with work permits, business visas and employment termination and offboarding. Moreover, our International PEO and payroll services are a more cost-effective way of entering a foreign market compared to foreign branch setup or even contacting a local citizen.

In my previous blog post, I wrote about trends that gave rise to the increasing popularity of employment outsourcing and emphasized the unique benefits it gives to businesses.

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In today’s post, I would like to touch on how companies of different sizes can benefit from the apparent benefits of employment outsourcing.

Small Business

Employment outsourcing makes the most sense for small businesses that cannot always afford to hire full-time human resources staff. Start-ups, in particular, do not always have enough workload to justify hiring full-time employees. Besides, projects of a few months duration often require temporary staff.

This is where remote work comes in place. The advantages of working remotely are too visible to ignore. When managing remote employees, managers can distribute work among the employees more efficiently, avoid various distractions that do not exist at home and get better performance because motivation may differ.

According to surveys of 1,000 Americans, 67 percent feel more productive when working remotely and an even higher percentage of big companies take advantage of home and virtual offices.

So, surprising as it may seem, employment outsourcing allows running a truly international business even without ever hiring a single employee.

Enterprise Business

Owners and heads of established businesses realize they cannot possibly handle all processes their business involves and that it is no use being a jack-of-all-trades. Nor does it seem possible. Instead, they outsource certain aspects of their business, from basic functions to human resources. Similarly, all individuals do the same thing when turning to professionals for plumbing or car repair services. To sum up, outsourcing lets them focus on their core competencies while another company focuses on theirs.

Unique opportunities for employment outsourcing

• Developing a global mindset and an international view of different legal and political environments helps successfully handle unforeseen changes.
• Opportunity to travel the world for free, investing your time and effort into the development of the company you are working for.
• Geographic barriers are reduced or eliminated with more and more companies choosing to outsource to locations with a reputation for high-service delivery.
• Access to better products, services, and innovative technologies which otherwise will not be available or necessary.
• Exclusivity. Exclusive market information about foreign customers, marketplaces, or market situations that are not known to others can serve as a strong competitive advantage for your business.

Further Reading

Employment outsourcing

PEO services provider

Designated remote sales personnel: sell through independent sales agents yet managing and controlling them as if they were your company employees

It is commonly known that exporting adds up to your business stability and serves as a good source of increasing your sales potential as it expands the “pie” that you earn money from. However, when it comes to implementing the idea of breaking into the foreign markets, there is a number of steps to start with and, if you are lucky enough, continue taking to expand in the export markets.

So, what does exporting actually start with?

Surprisingly, exporting is rarely linked to employment solutions. This is despite the fact that at the initial stage it greatly depends on people company chooses to cooperate with, whether they are its international partners or sales personnel representing their products overseas.

Exporters are often stuck trying to make up the best way of a foreign market entry, searching partnerships, considering all economic factors, investing into various market researches and deciding on a legal entity setup.

However, some export companies, small and medium businesses in particular prefer hiring independent sales reps as the first step. The first efforts in exporting are unlikely to bring enough work to justify putting a full-time sales force on the company’s payroll. Lack of local market knowledge threatens with costly mistakes and investing into well-paid sales personnel can make no sense with little or no demand for your product.

A rather cost-effective alternative is to work with the independent sales agent. He works on a commission basis and is paid only when the sale is made. Moreover, agents of this type generally possess expert knowledge your internal personnel may not always have. On the other hand, you should not count on their loyalty as they generally play on their accounts’ side and push the products with the best sales potential.

Our solution has a lot more to offer

Having spent 15 years assisting global companies with entry into our region, we have elaborated a far better alternative to independent sales reps or any other type of manufacturer’s agents or representatives. Designated sales reps or agents at your full disposal are responsible for launching and boosting your product sales in the chosen markets making your company market entry fast and easy. You gain profit from export market expansion enjoying all pluses of working with independent sales agents yet managing and controlling them as if they were your company employees. With our solution you benefit from a unique opportunity to start sales in any country of our region. At the same time, you instantly benefit from working directly with your dealers, importers and customers.

Our company acts as an Employer of Record for your agents freeing you from having to open your own legal entity/ ies in each chosen country and letting you reap the benefits of exporting to our region with minimum costs and no employment risks.

If you have once thought of cloning yourself to dispense your selling style, your touch within all targeted countries, a cloning machine is not what we can give you. However, what we can give is a reliable sales agent whose task is to present your product and your business in a range of countries, ramp up your product sales and provide international continuity you are so much striving for.