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Article

13 min read

5 Employer of Record Use Cases for Enterprise Companies

Employer of record

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Author

Jemima Owen-Jones

Published

August 21, 2023

Last Update

September 23, 2024

Table of Contents

Rapid market expansion and testing

Reducing tech spend and admin overhead

Workforce planning for M&As

Payroll consolidation across regions

Offering equity and competitive employee benefits

Deel removes obstacles to global hiring

Key takeaways
  1. When entering new markets, enterprises usually seek low-risk entry, opportunity testing with minimal commitment, and efficient closing of unprofitable operations while retaining key talent.
  2. Global expansion brings on new challenges: discrepancies in processes in different regions and lots of manual work, making payroll and HR consolidation and efficiency one of the top priorities.
  3. Deel can help enterprise clients reduce tech spend and admin overhead by unifying global workforce management under one roof—in one, easy-to-use, global-first HR platform.

Enterprises have specific needs when expanding to new markets, like low-risk market entry and testing new opportunities with minimal commitment. In some cases, these organizations may be winding down operations in unprofitable markets, so they struggle to find a way to keep their key employees from that country.

Limited payroll options, high costs of establishing an owned entity, and compliance requirements are just a few of the hurdles that may be standing in the way.

But there’s one simple solution—employer of record (EOR).

In this guide, you’ll learn how working with an EOR can easily solve the five common challenges enterprises face during global expansion, and how Deel effortlessly addresses these challenges.

Rapid market expansion and testing

An employer of record enables enterprises to hire workers on the ground quickly and test new markets with minimum risks, thanks to its expertise in global compliance, streamlined processes, and knowledge of local regulations.

When expanding your operations to a new market, you may face several challenges:

  • Regulatory and legal intricacies: Navigating unfamiliar legal frameworks, labor laws, and regulatory requirements can pose significant obstacles and expose your company to legal and financial risks
  • Market knowledge: Lack of understanding of local market dynamics, customer preferences, and competition can lead to missteps
  • Financial constraints: Initial investments for market entry, such as setting up facilities or establishing a local presence, can strain resources, as registering your own entity can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars including all permits, licenses, etc.
  • Talent acquisition: Finding and retaining qualified local talent can be difficult, especially in specialized fields. You may lose great candidates from your pipeline if they need to wait until you’ve set up a legal entity to compliantly hire them
  • Time-consuming process: Other than being costly, setting up your own entity can take a long time, sometimes up to a year depending on the complexity of local systems. You may miss valuable opportunities to expand and establish credibility in a new market before your competitors.

EORs have a deep understanding of local markets and broad partner networks that help ensure compliance in the host country.

As a global EOR, Deel provides localized employment contracts in 100+ countries, assuming all legal responsibility for your employees while you manage their day-to-day work. Deel also guarantees your foreign employees all statutory benefits and rights and protects you from employee misclassification and permanent establishment risks.

Read more: Can an Employer of Record Protect Your Company Against Permanent Establishment Risks?

Instead of working for months to register an entity, you can hire and onboard employees and contractors from the global talent pool in a matter of days and for an affordable fee, leveraging new markets before your competitors and avoiding the risk of losing your best talent.

Deel Employer of Record
Hire employees globally with the #1 Employer of Record
Deel provides safe and secure EOR services in 100+ countries. We’ll quickly hire and onboard employees on your behalf—with payroll, tax, and compliance solutions built into the same, all-in-one platform.

Finally, Deel assigns a dedicated customer success manager (CSM) to each client, no matter how small. This way, you also gain insight into local best practices, industry knowledge, and have a reliable advisor during your expansion journey.

Learn more: The Benefits of a Dedicated CSM: How Deel Sets You up for Success

Bonus use case: Winding down unprofitable markets

Not every expansion effort yields immediate success. Unprofitable markets can pose a challenge, but EOR equips enterprises with a graceful exit strategy.

Deel's expertise in navigating local regulations and its global network allows for the smooth and efficient winding down of operations. Retaining key talent in the host country while minimizing financial repercussions becomes a feasible option, ensuring you can strategically reallocate resources to more promising target markets.

Reducing tech spend and admin overhead

An EOR can help consolidate your HR tech stack by allowing you to manage everything in one platform, from hiring and onboarding to payroll management to local compliance and benefits administration, especially if robust automation features are available.

Transitioning to Deel has saved us approx 2-3 days per month in administration time and costs. We used to have multiple people across the globe trying to coordinate and diagnose issues or run manual processes. The time saved includes multiple salaries and productivity time.

Bec Donnelly,

Vice President of People

If you use different tech for managing your direct workers and international ones, you may face the following obstacles to seamless processes:

  • Incompatible systems: Managing disparate HR and payroll systems across different countries can lead to inefficiencies, especially if there’s a lack of integration, which can result in manual data entry, errors, and wasted time, leading to higher admin overhead
  • Inconsistent processes: Variations in HR processes and policies across regions hinder standardization, driving up admin costs
  • Scalability challenges: Traditional systems may struggle to handle increased workloads as the company grows globally, necessitating costly upgrades
  • Vendor management: Coordinating with multiple vendors for different HR functions can result in higher costs and administrative complexities
  • Data silos: Lack of centralized data storage can lead to duplicated efforts, reduced visibility, and increased admin workload
  • Compliance burden: Ensuring compliance with diverse labor laws and regulations requires additional administrative efforts
  • Audit and governance: Meeting audit requirements and ensuring data accuracy across multiple systems add to admin workload
  • Change management: Implementing new systems or upgrades globally requires managing resistance, training, and adaptation
  • Hidden costs: Unforeseen expenses, such as system maintenance, upgrades, and licensing fees, contribute to increased tech spend.

A global employer of record like Deel can successfully tackle all these challenges by centralizing your data in our global-first platform with fields tailored to the country where your talent resides. This way, you can easily hire employees from new countries without needing to implement new HR systems to manage them.

Try Deel HR

Onboarding an employee in Germany is completely different from onboarding an employee in Argentina. But you don’t have to use 16 different tools to onboard all your workers in different locations; you can do it all in one place with tailored workflows without the frustrating not-applicable fields that disrupt your productivity and interrupt your processes.

Spend 51% less time onboarding new hires!

Deel also offers a wide range of integrations with other workforce management systems, such as Ashby, BambooHR, and CultureAmp. Not only does this make Deel cost-effective, but also a highly scalable platform, as our HR services were designed to support growing global teams.

How using an EOR for expansion can cut even more of your costs

Other than reducing tech and admin overhead costs, an EOR can save you significant amounts of money when unlocking a new market, compared to registering your own legal entity.

The financial advantages of hiring through an EOR are reflected in:

  • Elimination of upfront expenses necessary to establish an entity overseas, such as registration fees, legal counsel hired for incorporation, minimal capital requirements, account fees, and more
  • Reduced risk of non-compliance fines and penalties
  • Cost-effective new market entry in terms of flexible hiring of FTEs and independent contractors for short-term and long-term assignments

Read more about the financial advantages of using EOR services instead of setting up entities overseas.

Workforce planning for M&As

An employer of record helps enterprises integrate talent after a merger or acquisition by enabling them to keep employees from countries where they don’t have a local entity and provide an equitable employee experience for all workers regardless of location.

Mergers and acquisitions are complex business processes, even more when done cross-border:

  • Human resources alignment: Harmonizing HR policies, compensation structures, and employee benefits for new employees can be intricate when dealing with local employment laws in different countries
  • Global compliance: To retain inherited talent, you need to get familiar with the varied legal requirements across new jurisdictions
  • Operational integration: Integrating different operational processes, systems, and technologies across borders can be disruptive for your workflows, hindering overall productivity
  • Data privacy and security: You need to comply with diverse data protection laws, like GDPR in Europe, and ensure secure data transfer across all your locations
  • Time zone differences: Managing operations and communication across different time zones can lead to coordination challenges, especially if there’s little overlap
  • Cultural integration: Integrating diverse cultures and fostering a unified company culture is essential for successful post-merger integration and maintaining employee morale.

An EOR can effectively address most of these cross-border transaction challenges. Through its local partners, an EOR can help you build competitive compensation packages and offer localized benefits relevant to local talent, all while staying compliant.

With its advanced technology and centralized platforms for talent management, EORs can also help streamline processes, automate manual tasks, and centralize employee data in a single database for easier access, enhanced data security, and more efficient management.

Dedicated security with Deel

Deel doesn't take data privacy and security lightly. That's why we offer multiple methods of protecting our client data:

  • GDPR compliance
  • Okta SSO
  • Encrypted network communication that runs over SSL/HTTPS
  • Proactive security measures like penetration testing looking to remove any system vulnerabilities
  • SOC2 compliance
  • ISO27001 certification

Learn more

Deel’s HR tools can also help with cultural integration of the inherited talent and fostering the sense of belonging among new joiners. Deel Engage plugins for Slack allow you to boost team engagement and encourage workers to connect despite the physical distance.

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Payroll consolidation across regions

An EOR can offer expertise and compliance in running payroll for international employees, ensuring accurate payouts, deductions, tax filing, and compliant record keeping.

Payroll processing outside of the borders of your own country can come with a number of hurdles:

  • Tax compliance: Tax requirements vary by country and you must comply with local regulations in the new countries to avoid fines and legal issues
  • Currency and data management: Dealing with multiple currencies, data privacy regulations, and secure data handling adds complexity to payroll operations
  • Payroll variation: Managing varying payroll practices, tax calculations, and deductions across regions requires accuracy and consistency
  • Integration and systems: Ensuring seamless integration of HR and payroll systems, especially in different time zones, can be technically demanding
  • Regulatory changes and compliance risk: Frequent changes in regulations and the risk of non-compliance require continuous monitoring and adaptation
  • Provider management and auditing: If working with multiple payroll service providers, you need to ensure accurate reports, compatible data and processes, and frequent audits
  • Payroll visibility: Achieving a comprehensive view of global payroll data for reporting and analysis purposes can be challenging if data is scattered across different platforms.

Employers of record can address these challenges for client companies thanks to robust platforms where you can manage your entire payroll in one dashboard. Manual tax calculations are replaced with automation for higher accuracy and your workers automatically receive payslips after each payday.

Deel enables clients not only to pay workers everywhere in one click from one dashboard, but also to run payroll for direct employees, international employees, and independent contractors under one roof, with multiple payment options and currencies supported across the globe.

Learn how Change.org saves 300+ hours on admin each month thanks to Deel

Since using Deel’s Global Payroll, Change.org has saved more than 300 hours on admin each month.

"Other providers are stuck in the past in the way their platforms are built and the way their customer service works. We wanted the elevated experience Deel provides," says Allie Shulman, Director of People Operations at Change.org.

Learn more

Deel also offers comprehensive reporting features that allow customers to gain insight into their global payroll to understand their spending and easily spot any errors between payroll cycles.

With 200+ in-house, localized experts and payroll managers, you can be sure that you’ll be notified of any changes in payroll tax regulation in any country you hire from.

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Offering equity and competitive employee benefits

As their legal employer, an EOR can offer your international employees localized benefits and perks that are tailored to their needs, while complying with local laws and regulations regarding statutory benefits, minimum wages, and more.

When hiring globally, enterprises often encounter various obstacles to offering relevant and competitive benefits packages:

  • Diverse regulations: Navigating varied equity and benefit regulations and taxation rules in different countries can lead to complexities in structuring plans and challenges in calculating and withholding taxes correctly
  • Currency fluctuations: Fluctuations in exchange rates can impact the value of equity awards and the purchasing power of benefits
  • Administration complexities: Administering varied equity and benefit plans across regions demands streamlined systems and consistent processes
  • Employee mobility: Managing equity plans and benefits for globally mobile employees adds intricacies to plan administration
  • Customization and fairness: Offering flexible benefits that cater to individual needs and align with employee expectations and aspirations while ensuring equity across your global team is crucial for engagement and talent retention
  • Cost considerations: The cost of providing competitive equity and benefits across diverse countries can strain budgets
  • Vendor management: Coordinating with multiple vendors and equity plan management adds complexity to benefit administration.

Partnering with an EOR allows you to offer employee benefits you wouldn’t be able to access without a local presence. Your remote workers will be able to enjoy private health insurance, stock options, wellness perks, and any other benefit your EOR can offer through their partner network.

Other than enabling the diversity in your compensation packages, EORs ensure that equity and benefit plans adhere to local employment laws, safeguarding against legal pitfalls.

Did you know?

Deel integrates with Ramp, the platform for easy equity management for your global team.

Learn more about how Deel helps you provide equity to foreign workers.

Deel removes obstacles to global hiring

Deel’s learned from its own experience: with a team of 2,000+ people dispersed across around 100+ countries, we know how frustrating hiring can become when you face the complexities of international employment laws.

But don’t let them stop you from growing your global team.

With Deel’s vast in-house expertise, self-serve and easy-to-use platform, 24/7 in-app support, flat-rate pricing without hidden costs, and incredible flexibility to cater to your business needs, we can help you hire talent in over 150 countries and streamline HR and payroll regardless of location.

Learn why 15,000+ businesses trust us to support their global expansion.

Next steps

Interested in PEO rather than an EOR? Coming soon: Manage payroll, benefits, and HR for your US team with Deel.

Learn more

Want to know everything about EORs? We have… exactly that. Download our detailed guide to employers of record.

Download the guide

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About the author

Jemima is a nomadic writer, journalist, and digital marketer with a decade of experience crafting compelling B2B content for a global audience. She is a strong advocate for equal opportunities and is dedicated to shaping the future of work. At Deel, she specializes in thought-leadership content covering global mobility, cross-border compliance, and workplace culture topics.

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