If remote working has taught us anything it’s that all those meetings we sat through where I thought “this could’ve been an email” could’ve definitely been an email. 🙄

Just like the pandemic, remote work is now going viral 😷 As more and more teams are transitioning away from their traditional office-based environments to more flexible remote alternatives, HR professionals are faced with a new challenge: how do I set up a remote team? 🤔

Why Remote Teams? Actually, why the hell not? 😈

Whatever your reasons may be for hiring a remote team, don’t let doubts cloud your decision-making and look at what is going to benefit & align with your organization’s core business goals ⚽️ 🥅 

Key 🔑 advantages of moving to a remote or distributed model; 

  • Expanding into new markets 
  • Access to best global talent 
  • Cost savings on real estate 
  • Increasing productivity
  • Cross culture collaborations
  • Less restrictions on geographical boundaries 
  • Wellbeing of employees

There are already some great examples of companies who have engaged remote teams as part of their organization. Take Zapier for example, they claim to be a ‘100% distributed company with over 300 remote employees in 17 time zones and 28 countries’. While other tech giants, like Microsoft & Twitter who have already announced new WFH policies and moving to a distributed model, championing the remote culture.

Building a Remote Work Team from Scratch

Now the fun part starts 😉  Naturally, setting up remote teams can be challenging, especially when it’s across multiple jurisdictions. 

The pains of navigating laws, compliance, processes and ever changing regulations, cause all sorts of decision-making headaches 🤯, particularly if businesses whose teams are already working lean.. 

That’s where partnering with a HR solutions specialist,  who understands  how to engage an employee in any country through Professional Employment Organisation (PEO) or Employer of Record (EOR).

Trust us! It will ease those headaches and open up your options 😉

Quick-Start Guide to Setting Up a Remote Team:

Due Diligence 🔍 

Before going gunhoe and setting up entities all over the world, map out your global workforce geographically, by volume, headcount and cost per hire in these respective countries.

You will then need to make an analysis on whether it is feasible to set up an entity or opt for an expert PEO solutions provider

Legal ⚖️

This is one of the most important steps. No matter how big your organization is, you must engage with a lawyer to make sure you are setting your business up, compliantly. 

Some questions you should be asking are;

  • Are foreign enterprises allowed to set up legal operations?
  • Can a foreign enterprise be 100% foreign owned? 
  • Can we hire foreign & local employees, legally? 
  • What are the employment laws in this country? 
Immigration ✈️

Immigration laws differ in each country and most often is the deciding factor between onboarding local talent, or moving employees to newer markets. 

Always check with your lawyer any mandated quotas of foreign vs local talent a company has to hire, requirements (obviously 🙄), conditions and cost (as this can become costly in some locations) 

Hiring Talent 🤓

To build a team, you may need to hire new talent, take over existing teams or bring specialist workers on board to help steer your expansion plans. 

Without a legal entity set-up in a country this may seem impossible, but it is not as hard as it sounds. 

This can be simplified by routing the hiring and onboarding process via a PEO solutions provider like Agile.

HR-Related Admin 👩🏽‍💻

To ensure that there are no loose ends with the set-up of a remote team and the hiring of new employees, here is a handy checklist for each remote worker:

  • Employee contracts 
  • Employee NOCs/Waivers
  • Visas/work passes
  • Set-up payroll
  • Organise tax processes depending on the country’s taxation laws
  • Set-up the insurance and benefits requirements 
  • Set-up organisational charts/team workflow
  • Set-up employee’s IT access and processes 
  • Set-up collaboration and communication tools [link to blog-post about software tools for remote teams]

👉🏽 If you are interested in that checklist in a pdf format, feel free to reach out to [email protected], you will make him happy 😊

If you are looking at setting up a remote team, hire employees in a foreign country, or simply considering expanding globally or regionally, speak to us about how we can help via https://www.agilehro.com/