Dealing with the rigors of the international marketplace means being able to adapt to different trends, as well as keep a steady stream of talent so you can compete. In order to handle this issue, you also need to be ready to hire talent from different areas, as well as deploy them over the course of international expansion. However, working across different countries when hiring talent or utilizing existing members of your teams comes with inherent risks. Here’s how to tackle them.

Benefits of Cross-Border Hiring

As a start, it’s essential that we talk about some of the benefits of cross-border hiring. After all, it’s difficult to discuss risk without reward. Here are some of the key benefits for putting together cross-border ventures:

• The ability to increase revenue by expanding operations and your audience.
• Diversifying the portfolio for your clients. For example, if one region had economic issues, profits from other areas could make it easier to weather the market shift.
• Upscaling products. Having a larger international market makes it easier for you to spread your offerings to different areas. In addition, you have a larger talent pool to work from if you need to ramp up operations to take advantage of a surge in business.

So, with this in mind, say that you’re looking to break into a particular area. One key thing to do is find a strategy for your market entry. A few of the options include:

• Direct export
• Licensing
• Franchising
• Partnering
• Joint Ventures
• Buying an existing company

Each of these comes with its own set of pros and cons. For example, moving into an existing company means that you have an existing infrastructure, but also existing expectations you need to adhere to.

As a side note, it’s essential when planning a market entry strategy, that you pay proper attention to HR. Whether your focus is diversification, concentration, or going international, you need to power your plans with talent. A refined global HR method, using services like Professional Employer Organization or a Global Employer of Record (GEOR) is key here.

Cross-Border Employment Pressure Points

With that covered, we can begin to talk about some of the risks of cross-border operations.

Compliance: Compliance is a far-reaching category, but certain areas are more likely to give your company trouble. Tax risks are one key area of discussion. For example, you need to make sure that you are properly paying your tax responsibilities for each country you do business in, while keeping your business structure in mind. In addition, if you’re transferring current employees to work as expatriates, you need to be mindful of immigration law.

Employee misclassifications: Many people perceive independent contractors as an easy way to fill global teams. However, opting for this route, and giving the wrong classification, can end up causing problems like financial penalties and the early termination of projects.

Employee retention: This is a concern for any business, but can be especially troublesome for cross-border operations. Benefits and other expectations may be different from one country to the other.

Culture barriers: This is mainly an issue when employing expats. It may be difficult to work with local professionals or partners at first. Discrimination may even become an issue.

Time issues: If there is a large time zone difference between the country and your base of operations, it may impact the ability of your teams to contact each other or deliver projects properly.

Systemic risk: Economic developments in the country you’re doing business in may impact your operations. These include market problems in the local economy or even political unrest.

Legal risks: In some cases, a legal change may occur in your country of business that has an instant impact on your business. This can include the law being applied in a way you wouldn’t expect, or international sanctions on the entire country.

The Art Of Managing Global Assignment Risks

With all these potential pitfalls, it’s important to make sure that you know exactly how to manage issues when it comes to cross-border employment. Generally, this orbits around two main points. The first is making sure that you’re confident on how to maintain the processes of hiring and assigning international talent. This means making sure that you’re able to find clarity and transparency, potentially across multiple countries.

The second stage of this is understanding that you won’t be able to manage all of this alone. Even the most diligent companies and HR departments may not be cognizant of the different regulations and aspects of employment law for each company in which they do business. Considering how these can change or be extremely complex, it’s best to have reliable business partners in this area.

If you’re interested in finding professional support when it comes to your cross-border employment and secondment, your ideal first option is working with Acumen International. When it comes to helping your company grow, we offer a variety of key benefits. These include:

• Global coverage, with support in over 190 countries.
• The ability to help with employment compliance in each country we serve, no matter the specific regulations.
• Complete confidence that your employees will be classified properly, and employee benefits repayment will be handled correctly.
• 24/7 support in case you have any issues.
• Flexibility in service, as well as a clear termination procedure that still leaves you in control.

Acumen International is your ideal partner when it comes to all of these different methods. We look forward to working with you for all your cross-border hiring needs.

Reach out to us today for more information.

International expansion has a wide variety of benefits for just about any company, from being able to reach out to new customers to insulating themselves from market issues in their original country. However, like any business proposition, there’s going to be an element of risk. International expansion going wrong has damaged or even sank some companies, and it’s largely due to some of the following reasons:

• Misreading the new audience
• Neglecting your original client base
• Failing to follow regulations in your new market

The final issue can be particularly damaging due to not only dealing with fines but the fallout that comes with having broken tax or hiring laws abroad. A PEO solution is one of your best options to avoid this problem.

What Is A Global PEO Solution?

At the core, a global PEO (a Professional Employer Organization) is a company designed to serve as an outsourcing firm for companies looking to do business abroad. What this essentially entails is that rather than hiring individuals directly and dispersing them to international locations, the PEO will take care of a lot of these elements. These can range from:

• Insurance/benefits
• Payroll
• Hiring
• Retirement
• Regulatory compliance
• Training/development

Note, the PEO will still follow the instructions of the company that enlists them, and ultimately, those that use the PEO will have final say over decisions like employee termination. A global PEO solution simply serves as an intermediary that acts locally on the client’s behalf. This solution is widely used by international companies to onboard and payroll a remote workforce – highly skilled talent or local sales managers.

How is this the case? In order to do business in another country, most international regulations require you to either incorporate or establish a legal entity. These processes can be long, expensive, and in some cases, difficult to obtain. By using a PEO service, you can bypass this step while still remaining compliant with local laws and regulations.

PEO solutions are generally used by companies that have already decided to expand internationally through a local team, or perhaps a local team headed by an expat worker. Hand-in-hand with this is figuring out a way to deploy these team members, as well as how to properly arrange/manage them.

Risks And Concerns Of Hiring A Remote Workforce

As mentioned earlier, any business decision comes with risk, and the same applies to a remote workforce. Some potential risks include:

• Misclassifying full-time workers as independent contractors
• Failing to adhere to labor laws in terms of benefits/tax responsibility
• IP accidentally being attributed to a single worker versus your company
• Trade secrets being spread by your international team

With a lot of these issues, your ignorance of law serves as a little excuse. It’s essential for you to have a means to regulate the employment relationship, even if they are in a different country from you. This is why a full global HR infrastructure needs to be in place before you start hiring. In essence, a PEO employment service is insulated against a lot of the problems with a workforce. Using this business model not only keeps you from problems like misclassification but also avoids you losing a client base by having such mistakes/penalties going public. In addition, it allows companies to start back-bone operations in a new market with a small headcount and ‘test’ the market before incorporating in the country.

What You Get With A Global PEO Service

So, with this in mind, what exactly are some of the benefits that you get in terms of using a global PEO service? The most obvious one, as we covered before, is the fact that it mitigates a lot of the existing risks with a remote workforce. Having a service as a partner that specializes in tackling international compliance and hiring regulations means less stress and work for you. Along with this, being able to quickly adapt to different regulations makes it far more feasible to expand to multiple markets at once. This applies whether you’re looking to move to multiple countries in a single region or across several regions.

There are other benefits that shouldn’t be ignored, either. For example, using a PEO service helps you upscale your product line at a quicker rate, since you don’t have to go through as much red tape. In turn, this lets you add more clients to your portfolio, which supports the bottom line. Along with this, being able to develop quickly internationally and avoid any penalties or sanctions helps preserve the international image of your business.

When looking for the ideal global PEO program to take advantage of all these benefits, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better match than Acumen International. Our services can support your international business expansion in over 190 major global markets. We’re ready to help you develop your workforce and image in the new markets.

Reach out to us today for more information.

More and more companies are seeing the value in expanding their business internationally, whether they are planning to enter new markets, expand their market share, or diversify their customer base. In order to do this, companies need to be able to recruit international talent and to relocate some of the team members to foreign countries. By doing this, companies can get a strong foothold in the new markets or tap into unique skills, regardless of where they are based. For this reason, the notion of workforce mobility is becoming more and more important.

Workforce Mobility Trends

First, let’s talk about some of the key trends that are driving global mobility across the board. One thing that’s making the prospect more attractive is the idea of developing the employee experience. For example, say you are a company planning for some major international expansion soon and have an employee quickly rising onto a management track. It would just make proper sense in this situation to try and invest in business travel for them to create a more well-rounded prospect.

Many companies are dealing with a skilled talent shortage, especially in certain markets and niches. Hiring on skills versus geography is a great way to get around this, but you also need to have the means to deploy international talent when it is needed.

Finally, having an international workforce inherently benefits your international expansion. From globalizing your methods to helping develop your networking, being able to lean on the expertise of your international workers is great for helping you make headway in an environment, where the customer base and business norms may be different.

Elements Of Global Talent Mobility

So, if you find that corporate mobility is for you, what are some of the ways that you can go about doing it? There are three main methods up for discussion, and sometimes, a combination of these is the best option.

Foreign employment: Sometimes, you want to work from the outside in and augment your in-house team with a pool of contingent workers in the target country you’re looking to do business in. Just make sure you onboard them in full compliance with employment legislation of the host country.

International assignment or secondment: Another option here is taking employees from within your company and assigning them elsewhere for a limited period of time Such employees are seconded employees. They continue to contribute to the home country for social security while working for the employer company overseas.

Expats sent overseas – By using your existing team and deploying them as expat workers, you can have the exact talent you want leading your new branch or company overseas. Just note that this can take a long time and a lot of expenses to manage.

International expansion to new markets: In some cases, you may want to take a more formal approach, like setting up a new branch, to get into a new market. This allows you to build the organizational structure to get a proper presence.

Best Practices For Corporate Transfer and Relocation

So, with all these elements kept in mind, what are some of the best practices that companies can put in place for managing their corporate relocation?

First of all, it’s essential to have contingency plans on top of contingency plans when it comes to addressing common relocation concerns. Here are a few of the common examples that tend to arise.

• Immigration complexity: Every country has its own unique immigration regulations, and oftentimes, they can be in flux. As a result, you need to make sure you are fully aware of the laws on the books, but also how future laws may be trending to build your team.
• Uncertainty: As mentioned before, especially in recent years, immigration and immigration policy have been a hot-button issue in many countries. You want to make sure your business is ready to adapt accordingly.
• Visa delays: Many companies building international teams will want to have a few members of their core teams sent over in order to both teach others and ensure a universal standard. Visa delays can end up negatively impacting the timeline if not accounted for.
• Demographic challenges: In some cases, it may be difficult to find prospects in the right demographics that you want for a certain position in a certain country.

Immigration compliance hangs over all of these points as a greater issue. Failing to comply with a country’s immigration regulations not only means potential sanctions and risk of visa rejection but a severe hindrance of you doing business in a given country in the future.

Finally, it’s essential for companies serious about workforce mobility solutions to have a partner in place to help facilitate the process. As our other examples show, there are a lot of bureaucratic and logistical roadblocks to relocating your top talent across international settings. Looking into countries that help with relocation is a good way to ensure you’re staying in compliance and minimizing the risks of some of the most common concerns.

If you’re looking for a global mobility consultant to further your goals, using a work permits for expats program, like what Acumen International offers, is the perfect match. Our global mobility consultants can provide work permit and immigration support for over 190 countries. Be able to smoothly move around talent to further your international expansion with our support.