What are the visa regulations of hiring internationally? 

Once you open the door to international hiring, be prepared for your current employees to explore opportunities for international work. One of the best ways to train international staff and ensure your culture is established in a new location is to post experienced staff in the new location. Knowing how to handle international employee relocation will help you answer any questions that might arise.

There are two parts to acquiring the legal right to work internationally:

Is your candidate eligible to reside in the country?

Is your candidate eligible for a work visa in the country? 

Let’s explore these questions in more detail.

You must ensure each employee qualifies and is approved for the appropriate visa and work permits before an assignment commences. In many countries, employees must meet minimum thresholds of residency for immigration (e.g., agree to reside in the country for a minimum number of days each year). Other requirements can include:

Getting a physical from a designated medical professional

If your candidate does not meet residency standards, applying for a work visa is a waste of time and money. It is not possible for employees to work in countries where they do not even have permission to reside.

There are usually several hurdles to getting a work visa in a new country. Your candidate might need specific experience, education, or skills to qualify for a visa. For example, some countries require knowledge workers to have a university degree regardless of their experience. It’s possible to have a work permit issued, but the employee still needs sponsorship from a company before a visa is granted.

In some countries, a work visa will only be issued if there are no qualified local candidates. You may have to prove you’ve done a thorough job search in the local market before you can relocate someone from another country. 

There may be different types of work visas in a country depending on immediate needs for specific skills versus a normal migration requirement. It’s not uncommon to see temporary work visas, permanent work visas, and special work visas. All are valid for employment, but each flavor will come with different requirements depending on the issuing country.

While relocations may seem complicated, an EOR can guide you through the process of acquiring the appropriate visas and work permits. However, any offer of international employment should be conditional on meeting the immigration and visa requirements of the country where your candidate will reside and work. Even if you, your candidate, and your EOR are all in agreement, you cannot move forward without the approval of the government in question.

Remote offers a helpful relocation program to ensure you and your employees have a seamless and compliant relocation experience.

How Remote makes it easy to hire internationally 

Hiring your first international team members can be a daunting task — but don’t fear! Remote can help you hire, onboard, pay, and offer benefits to your global team with ease. We operate in dozens of countries all around the world – and that number is growing all the time.

With Remote, you can onboard global employees and contractors with just a few clicks, managing your whole international team in one great platform. We navigate the complexities of global hiring on your behalf, so you can spend less time worrying about international hiring laws and more time focusing on growing your business.

Remote allows businesses of all sizes to hire in new countries without the financial or time investment of opening new entities or foreign subsidiaries. Because Remote is an owned-entity EOR, you always have a single point of contact for all your international hiring needs — from payroll to benefits to taxes and more. Remote even allows you to offer stock options to your employees, directly through the Remote platform!

The thought of moving to an international business model may leave your board giddy with excitement and you with a healthy dose of anxiety. The practicalities of hiring internationally can be daunting, especially if you have traditionally kept your hires local. As the world moves to a remote way of working, though, traditional barriers to hiring internationally are gone. In their place is an opportunity to gain competitive advantage by building a world-class team. 

Fortunately, whether you are a seasoned international hiring veteran or just getting started, you don’t have to do it alone. Working with Remote, you can take advantage of a global talent pool with no stress, no surprises, and consistently low flat-rate pricing. Just think of what you could accomplish with all the talent in the world just an offer letter away!

With Remote’s global employment services platform, you can: 

Hire people with confidence in dozens of countries.

Manage global payroll for employees and contractors in one place.

Maintain compliance in your global hiring practices.

Have a single point of contact for your international employment needs.

Eliminate the need to invest in international offices.

Save money on entity or foreign subsidiary costs.

Eliminate the risk of misclassifying employees.

Reduce legal and consulting fees associated with international hiring.

Grow and scale your business with speed and efficiency.

Build a culture of diversity, engagement, and inclusion.

And the best part is, you don’t even have to wait. Sign up now to begin onboarding employees and contractors around the world in minutes!

The fastest, easiest, safest way to hire internationally 

Whether you are a startup or an established enterprise, Remote is the most cost-effective way to build your international team, stay compliant with labor and taxation laws, and enjoy the benefits of international hiring.

If you are ready to get started — or if you’d like to ask some questions! — Remote is here and ready to help.

Sign up now to begin onboarding international employees and contractors right away.

Contact us to speak with a global employment expert about your company’s unique needs.

Hiring international employees can be risky if you’re not familiar with local payroll, taxes, benefits, and compliance in every country where you source talent. This guide was developed to answer all your international hiring questions to help you feel comfortable and confident as you begin onboarding international employees.

Guide to hiring international employees

When Should you Use an Employer of Record, and Which One Should you Choose?

When should you use an employer of record, and which one should you choose?

What is happening in the global world of compensation right now? 

Remote work and distributed workforces create some confusing questions about how much to pay employees living in different places. Some organizations (particularly those that are primarily office-based) actually penalize remote workers with reduced salaries for working away from the company headquarters. While cost of living can be a factor in employee compensation, punishing employees for working remotely is the wrong approach.

Research from Remote found that 81% of workers would move to a new place if they could do so without affecting their prospects at work. As remote work makes workers more mobile, people are less willing to stay in one place when they know they could do the same work for the same or similar pay in a more desirable location.

That does not always mean moving to a tropical paradise, however. Many employees move to be closer to their families, to access better schools for their children, or simply to experience a new culture. The reasons for moving can vary, but the option for mobility is the common factor. Companies that are more accommodating of employee relocation are much more likely to attract and retain great people in the long term.

To compete for the best talent in different locations, companies cannot simply offer the bare minimum of statutory benefits required by law. Employees are attracted to opportunities with more competitive benefits packages. Fortunately, developing a more appealing benefits package does not necessarily mean spending a lot of money.

The modern benefits stack today’s employees desire most puts flexibility at the front. Not every employee wants to work remotely, but many of them do, and those workers do not want to limit their options to companies requiring a return to office. Perks like flexible working hours, location independence, and home office stipends can go a long way toward making employees feel supported regardless of where they want to work. Add in the more traditional benefits, like pensions and health insurance, and the benefits part of a total rewards package can play a major role in attracting and retaining employees.

The beauty of a total rewards policy is that it’s scalable by nature. Once you understand how and why you set salaries at certain levels and how to offer the best benefits, you can make competitive offers to great candidates much more quickly.

Think of two situations. In the first situation, you have no clear total rewards policy. When you find a great candidate for an open role, you must quickly figure out what the salary for the role should be, which benefits you can offer in the candidate’s country, and how much cost of living should affect your offer. This process takes time to complete, leaving your candidate with a lot of frustrating “it depends” answers and potentially leading the candidate to take another offer.

With a clear total rewards policy, you can skip all the parts of compensation that drag out the hiring process. Find a candidate, look at your policy, and tender a great offer immediately. The candidate doesn’t keep looking for other jobs because you demonstrated how much you value this person and how excited you are to have them join your team.

The same is true of internal scalability for total rewards. Your policy not only covers new hires, but also events like promotions and performance reviews. This accelerates internal mobility, ensuring people who are already within your organization feel valued and seen.

What are the different types of global compensation strategies?

There are, broadly, four different approaches to global compensation: paying everyone the same salary, adding a cost of living adjustment, using a salary calculator, or following a total rewards approach. Before we dive in and take a look at the differences between these four strategies, we first need to understand the difference between global pay, GEO pay, and local cost of living.

Global pay vs. GEO pay vs. cost of living

Global pay means setting salaries based solely on role and experience, then paying workers the same no matter where they live. GEO pay refers to using geo pay ranges to set salaries. Cost of living, of course, refers to using the cost of living of the city where the employee lives to adjust the employee’s salary.

Global pay and cost of living are self-explanatory, but geo pay ranges are a little different. Geo pay ranges are large areas with similar costs of living. For example, a standard cost of living model for compensation might consider every individual city within a country, while a geo pay range may include a few countries with similar costs of living as one entity in terms of salary calculations. We use geo pay ranges at Remote, because doing so allows us to compensate our team members with higher salaries.

The following are the most commonly used strategies for determining global compensation.

Global pay: Roles, not regions, determine salaries.

This is the easiest strategy to manage, but it is also the most expensive. Paying everyone the same usually means setting salaries at a rate tied to an expensive city — otherwise, the company would be unable to hire anyone living in a major metropolitan area. That means an employee working in San Francisco as a senior operations specialist, for example, would earn exactly the same salary as a senior operations specialist in Chiang Mai, Thailand. For smaller companies with lots of money, this may be a good option, but scaling global pay gets expensive quickly.

Cost of living: Set salaries by role and adjust by city or region.

As mentioned previously, companies can consider cost of living using either city-level data or geo pay ranges. Geo pay ranges strike a good balance between global pay and city-level costs of living by compensating employees with higher salaries without creating huge gaps in pay equity. With geo pay, anyone living in a high cost of living area still receives a good salary, while someone in a lower cost of living area receives a higher salary than they would in a city-level model.

Cost-of-living calculator: Use a formula to set salaries.

A compensation calculator tied to cost of living can be a smart way to manage global compensation, at least for the salary portion. Buffer and GitLab both have salary calculators that are publicly available, so prospective hires can get a good idea of what they would make at the company. The trouble with owning a salary calculator comes with the upkeep — managing all those variables can be tricky, especially as factors like exchange rates change over time. Changing the calculator can have widespread implications throughout the workforce, so it’s important to get it right from the outset.

Total rewards program: Create a customized, scalable solution.

Large organizations and high-growth startups face immense challenges regarding global compensation. At Remote, we have some of the most hands-on experience with global compensation and total rewards in the world, so we used that expertise to develop a total rewards policy that is generous, equitable, and flexible.

For example, geo pay ranges allow us to pay our team members well no matter where they live. To ensure we can attract the best leadership candidates, we use global pay ranges for roles at the director level and up, benchmarked at 80% of the US rate. Our compra-ratio approach sets the baseline for salaries at 65% of the median rate (instead of the usual 50%), then adjusts up or down based on performance and experience. Tactics like this allow us to pay our employees well while leaving room for growth.

For more information on how different companies handle compensation, see our piece on how to manage remote worker compensation. If you want to know more about Remote’s total rewards policy, you can always check out our public company handbook.

Why fair global compensation is more than just salary

Fairness and equity are not as simple as setting equal salaries for all. Equality in compensation is important, but to achieve true equity, companies must account for everything from worker location to benefits packages.

The importance of a global compensation total rewards policy

Remote work gives employees more freedom to select the employment opportunities they like best. With more power shifting to the workforce, businesses need to be proactive in developing total rewards policies that are not only equitable and competitive, but also appealing.

To retain current talent and attract new employees, companies have to approach their total rewards policy holistically, including both financial and non-financial incentives. This is especially important given the cultural context and the discussion around equality. It’s the organization’s responsibility to structure rewards in a way that guarantees transparency and fairness. In addition, employees respond strongly to whole-person total rewards programs that include perks like mental health care, student loan repayment assistance, learning and development budgets, and similar nontraditional offerings.

Having an attractive, forward-thinking total rewards policy will not only act as a great motivator for employees to perform at their best but will also make them feel appreciated. Additionally, benefits like these will help employers to stand out from the competition, which is key in an increasingly competitive talent marketplace.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to benefits

Building a total rewards plan with associated benefits is a bit of an oxymoron. Every employee should feel their benefits package is personally relevant, but every employee should have access to the same company-sponsored benefits whenever possible.

Different countries have different rules for social contributions and associated government assistance. This should be reflected in your compensation benchmarking. For instance, at Remote, we take into account that the Netherlands requires an employer to pay a holiday allowance that translates to 8% of the employee’s annual earnings. We factor extras like this into our benchmarks for each role. In the Philippines and Mexico, both of which require employers to offer a 13 month’s salary, we follow the same practice.

State-mandated benefits alone do not make a competitive benefits package. Employers must also take into account rewards that aren’t required by the government but are seen by the employee as a market standard (for instance, private insurance packages in Brazil or the US). To stand out from other employers on the market, consider which nontraditional benefits your current and prospective employees may desire.

To give you a real-life example of how global compensation can be managed, let’s take a look at how we handle total rewards at Remote, where we have hundreds of employees in dozens of countries all over the world.

Total rewards philosophy and mission statement

At Remote, our mission is to ensure bias-free compensation and equity for all employees. Our total rewards policy is the result of deep research regarding compensation with employee wellbeing, fairness, and equity at the core. It is our hope that, through our approach to global compensation, we can inspire other companies to reward their distributed teams well, improve standards of living around the world, and empower more people as they contribute to their local economies.

Compensation data, benchmarking, and fair pay analysis

In 2021, Remote ran an extensive pay and equality analysis to understand how to benchmark compensation for each role. We included a gender gap analysis during this research to ensure everyone at Remote is paid fairly regardless of gender.

While we cannot publicly display our compensation data for specific employees, we do publicize the factors we use to determine compensation. Remote applies global pay to director-level employees and sales roles, which are benchmarked at 80% of the US rate. Compensation for all other roles is based on:

Level of experience and alignment to the position

65th percentile positioning within the overall market

Benchmarking across teams and departments to ensure internal equity and fairness

At Remote, we use the above-mentioned geo pay ranges as part of our rewards policy formula. When determining the cost of living index, we look at the exact costs of living per country instead of per city or region. This is important, as two neighboring countries might fall under two different geo ranges (for instance, Lebanon and Israel).

To ensure compliance everywhere Remote operates, all employees are paid in their local currency. We use a constantly updated calculator to convert from USD to all local currencies. To guarantee fairness and find balance between currency fluctuations, we use a 12 month trailing average rate. 

Our compensation review policy includes a number of factors, including:

Two annual performance reviews (compensation review in October/November and market check in May/June)

Determining role readiness and individual predispositions when determining promotions

Our compa-ratio metric, which takes the midpoint salary range on the market and compares it against our employees’ remuneration

For a deeper dive, be sure to give our public rewards policy document a read.

At Remote, we offer competitive benefits to employees, such as flexible working hours, unlimited time off, a learning stipend, and a co-working allowance. We also offer location-specific benefits, such as 13th and 14th salary and vacation stipend, when required by the employee’s home country.

All Remote employees also have access to a common pool of other great benefits, including our partnership with Modern Health for career coaching and mental wellness. Our goal is to set a high standard of living and create a benefits package that ensures Remoters all across the world are able to experience that standard.

How to attract and retain great talent with a global total rewards program

We have put together several resources to help you better manage payroll and benefits for your remote workforce. These include: 

Global Payroll Management Guide – Learn how to manage global payroll while staying compliant with international labor laws. Building a globally distributed team using a fair and equitable global compensation total rewards program is a great way to attract and retain the best talent worldwide.

Global Workforce Revolution Report – A comprehensive report which will help you prepare for the future of work and stand out in the competition for the best global talent. Learn about the top trends in remote work and see what employees want from the new world of work.

How to Calculate Compensation for Remote Employees – A great supplementary piece where we shed light on different compensation models, including examples from brands like Basecamp, Buffer, and GitLab.

Consulting services – Talk to our experts to learn how you can effectively grow your workforce globally while staying in line with international hiring laws. 

Move to a remote-first model– A resource that explains how you can remove barriers to global hiring and embrace the future of work. 

Managing global compensation can seem like an overwhelming task at first. Differentiating between global and geo-based salary rates and handling compulsory and additional benefits are just some of the elements you need to consider. The good news is that hiring a remote, distributed team can be a straightforward process, provided that you follow the right approach.

Remote recommends building a global compensation total rewards policy that accounts for a mixture of factors — location, market demands, global trends, and equitable pay. If you’re already hiring a global team, be sure to begin your rewards policy strategy by running a pay equity audit to close any unwanted gaps between groups at your company. To learn more about paying and managing a distributed team, be sure to give our Global Payroll Management Guide a read. 

What is the best approach to global compensation when you hire remotely: global or geo pay? Read our comprehensive resource to find out.

How to Manage Global Compensation: Remote's Total Rewards Policy

How to manage global compensation

Should you pay a remote worker the same rate you would pay a local one? What is fair in their country? What is the cost of living there? What benefits do they expect? What is considered to be competitive pay? While you do have a few options when calculating compensation for remote employees, finding your own balance can still be tricky. 

What about the taxes you pay for doing business in a country? “Permanent establishment” is a tax term for businesses that have an ongoing presence in a country. Permanent establishment applies to your country, you might be subject to corporate taxes abroad. You might also have to meet other standards of compliance that other international companies do not. Read Remote’s guide to permanent establishment for more information.

There are significant dangers to misclassifying your employees as contractors, so don’t try it. You could be subject to fines, penalties, and business bans under various local laws, as well as legal disputes with your employees.

Be cautious when defining job roles. What exactly will your employees do? What is their relationship to your company? Do you already have contractors in other countries? You may need to consider converting some contractors to employees (another potentially tricky situation).

Traditional office setups make intellectual property rights a bit more straightforward, if only because offices only exist in one country at a time. International hires complicate that somewhat.

Remote employees don’t always work in a company building, on company equipment, or on company time. Losing your IP rights because you’re not aware of international law can cause several problems, such as legal battles, reputation loss, and more. Read our guide on intellectual property rights for remote teams for more information.

Managing where remote employees pay taxes

If you’re based in one country and your team is located all over the world, how do you figure out income taxes? Do they pay taxes where they live? Where you’re based?

The good news is that taxes for remote workers are not much more complicated than those for traditional office workers. The bad news is that most educational resources on taxation cater to people in traditional environments. It’s important to know where remote workers pay taxes so you, and they, can remain compliant.

Fortunately, all of the above issues — intimidating though they might seem — are manageable. What you need is an expert partner who specializes in local employment law, and can guide you through recruitment, managing risk, and scaling effectively.

In many ways, the hiring process for remote, international employees is much the same as the hiring process for traditional, on-premise workers. That said, throughout the hiring and onboarding process, you will need to focus on how the job will be done remotely. 

The job posting. You need a clear job description and a solid understanding of how that job will be done remotely, as well as what tools and qualities potential job candidates will need to do the job. Before you start the process, be aware of where your job posting will be seen and what benefits and pay are expected by the people who will see it. 

The interview. Know ahead of time how you will be conducting your interview and what technology you’ll be using. At this point, most people are well versed in standard videoconferencing technology, but it’s important to choose a technology that can be easily accessed by all parties. 

Communication. Good communication is critical to remote teams, and that starts right at the beginning. Be clear about your expectations of applicants, talk to them and their references about their past experience, and understand that qualifications often change from country to country. Be clear about what the expectations of the job are, how you plan to work with your remote team, and what you’ll require of them. Your candidates may feel they’re taking a risk by taking a job with a remote and international employer, so make sure you’ve done your homework and can answer their questions. If you don’t have the answer for something, be honest about it and get back to them as soon as possible once you have an answer. 

Onboarding. When you’re working across time zones and borders, it’s important that everyone is on the same page when it comes to onboarding. This has to do with having a solid training program in place and with the legal paperwork that comes along with hiring an employee. This step is where you’ll likely need help. 

Here’s the truth: Unless your organization is a multinational corporation with an established legal entity in every country in the world, you’re going to need some help from an employer of record to handle payroll, taxes, and legal paperwork by yourself. It’s very easy to run afoul of international payroll requirements and tax obligations if you’re not an expert, and penalties can be stiff. 

It’s extremely important at this point that you are partnered with an organization that can help manage these pieces of your international hiring process. Choosing your partner is a big decision — for one thing, you need to make sure you find someone you can trust with payroll and taxes. For another, providers don’t all work in the same way. 

Owned-entity vs. partner-dependent employers of record

There are two kinds of global employment solutions providers. Some own legal entities in the countries where they operate, while others rely on partner networks. Many employers of record provide a mix of some owned entities and some partner networks, depending on the country.

An owned-entity provider actually owns a legal entity in the country you’re hiring in. That means they’re really, legally there. They’re already compliant with all the laws, so they can do everything for your organization, from payroll to taxes to IP protection, in house. 

Partner-reliant providers can’t provide all their services directly A partner network is exactly that: a collection of third-party companies. There’s more risk involved, and response times can be slower. If you have a problem, there may be more than one point of contact. Things may take longer because your point of contact needs to reach out to a vendor.

Third parties can also be risky. Owned entities are quicker to be compliant with local laws and don’t outsource your IP protection to a company you don’t know.

The choices don’t stop at owned-entity versus partner-dependent providers, although you should always try to work with a provider with its own entities in all countries where you plan to hire people. You should also know two common terms: a professional employer organization (PRO) and an employer of record (EOR).

These abbreviations are often used interchangeably within HR circles. While that’s not exactly wrong, there are a few distinctions. Think of it this way: all EORs are PEOs to some extent, but not all PEOs are EORs.

What does that mean? An employer of record legally employs workers in other countries on your behalf. You handle all the day-to-day management of your employee, but on the local paperwork, the EOR is technically the employer. This is the structure that allows you to employ people legally in other countries, and it’s one reason it’s so important to work with an EOR that does not outsource your employee experience to a third party.

Some PEOs do offer EOR services, but many do not. A PEO acts as a sort of external human resources department. They may be able to help you with payroll, benefits, and other HR-related tasks. Unless they explicitly offer employer of record services, however, they may not be able to help you with your plans for global hiring.

To make it clear, Remote is an employer of record offering full global HR services in all our covered countries. We only offer services in countries where we own a full legal entity. No half-measures here: When you work with Remote, you’re guaranteed the best experience, compliance, and security in the business.

To learn more about the differences between an EOR and a PEO, read our helpful article on the subject.

Common mistakes to avoid when hiring internationally

Creating a remote workplace is about more than simply hiring some workers online. 

While hybrid work models provide a good short-term basis to grow your international hiring, you must update systems and processes that allow remote and globally distributed teams to feel connected, aligned, and valued as highly as employees in the office. In the long term, hybrid models can leave people feeling disconnected, overworked, and ineffective due to the mistakes companies often make when they start going remote.  

Unless you consciously build a remote-first culture, you risk ostracizing your remote employees, who may feel like second-class citizens next to their on-site colleagues. As big a perk as remote work is, feeling left out of onsite bonding activities or perks — like after work drinks, lunches, or meetings scheduled in person — isn’t good for company culture. 

Clear communication  is critical when you’re working with a remote team. It can be easy to misconstrue digital communication, especially if you’re working across language or cultural boundaries. The best remote teams document everything. People work at different times and need to understand exactly what happened while they were sleeping.

Making sure that you’re anticipating the needs of the remote workforce goes a long way toward aligning your teams, creating a welcoming work environment for all, and retaining the workers you hired from all over the world. Check out what our CTO, Marcelo Lebre, has to say about asynchronous working.

Scaling international employment to build lasting success

Another thing to consider is how you’ll scale your international employment. You may start with  one employee in another country, then find more talent in the area and want to scale.

Choose tools that will grow with your business. In building a remote-first culture, that culture will have to scale too.

How do you build a remote-first culture? 

Growing a culture takes strategy, a conscious decision to base your team around remote-first values. This means taking a proactive approach to fostering diversity and hiring inclusively. You must also decide what your company values and how your team members should embody those values. No matter wether you are hiring remote designers, marketers, salespeople, or developers – your values must remain consistent and essential.

Be intentional about creating your global team. Don’t silo employees in territories. Encourage people to meet one another in meetings, in productivity platforms, and while working on projects. Not everyone’s work hours will be the same, but everyone should feel they’re working together. As the pandemic ends, in-person gatherings become a great way to foster team spirit.

Employees who reach outside of silos tend to achieve more. So, don’t make your employees reach — keep them as unsiloed as possible so they can collaborate. 

Your remote culture begins with onboarding

Culture builds every time you make a hire, whether you realize it or not. Your onboarding program should clearly communicate your remote-first work practices and make it easy for your new hires to start collaborating without stress. 

Onboarding is your new hire’s first experience with your organization, so use this time to introduce them to your company and your culture. Reinforce communication guidelines by both demonstrating the sort of communication you expect and demonstrating it yourself. Asynchronous communication thrives on fewer meetings and well-organized documentation, so you should have plenty of available reading (and listening, and watching) for new people to consume.

Consider assigning your new employee a buddy in their time zone, too, so they feel included and know where to turn when they have questions.

Hiring your first remote employees, especially those who live outside of your country, can be intimidating. Of course, you’re worried about risk. Of course, it’s hard to know where to start. And of course, compliance, taxes, and costs are all daunting questions. But making that first international hire isn’t just possible: with Remote, it’s quick and easy.

We fully own legal entities in the countries where we operate and can help companies of all sizes employ workers in those countries. For the best intellectual property protections, the best experience for your international employees, and the most reliable partner for your global expansion, we’re here and ready to help. Whether you have questions or you’re ready to sign up, we would love to meet you!

Hiring remotely expands your talent pool from your immediate area to, well, every area. No matter where the best candidates live, they can now work for you. This article will show you how.

How to Hire Remote Employees

How to hire remote employees

If you’re wondering whether you really need to know about international relocation, the answer is a resounding yes. According to our Global Workforce Revolution Report from last year, 81% of tech workers surveyed would move to a new region, state, or country if they could do so without jeopardizing their career prospects. To keep your best people, you need to be able to offer them the location flexibility they desire.

Now that most knowledge jobs can be done remotely, employees see remote work as a way to guard against recessions and financial difficulties. Sixty-three percent of respondents in our study said the ability to work remotely can protect workers from region-based financial challenges.

We found two-thirds of companies planned to increase remote work options, but that number is growing all the time. Employees have more options than ever as more companies go all-remote. Around a third of people would quit outright if they could not continue to work remotely. The lesson is: businesses need to offer remote work, and employees expect to be able to move anywhere they want if they work remotely. To meet that demand and stay compliant with international labor laws, companies have some work to do.

Unique relocation challenges with remote work

Companies should always seek to treat their employees equally. However, statutory requirements vary greatly from country to country. Overtime laws, minimum benefits, lengths of probationary periods, and hundreds of other details change when employees cross borders.

For example, take a person who leaves the US to work in Italy. In the US, employees usually work under “at-will” employment, a concept that does not exist in Italy. That change in location would require a whole new employment contract to reflect local laws. If that same person moved from Italy to Mexico, the employee would now be entitled to a 13th month’s salary, and the employee’s salary could only be deposited in a bank approved by the government.

Labor laws are mostly behind the times for remote workers. Employers are required to provide safe working conditions, but what happens when the place of work is the employee’s home? How does the employee’s right to privacy conflict with laws about workplace inspections? Is the employer required to cover certain expenses for employees working from home?

Relocation isn’t easy, but as the world becomes more connected, employers must be prepared to deal with the challenges that arise. 

Different types of international relocation

There are three major types of relocation: travel, short-term relocation, and long-term relocation. When your company is in one country and your employee plans to be in another country, you must first understand the type of relocation you are facing.

Travel may last for a few months or a year, but it always has a specific end date. Travelers must typically hold some kind of visa, such as a tourist visa or business visa. The type of work the employee may do is determined by the type of visa they hold.

Unlike travel, which always requires a specific visa, short-term relocation has the employee move to the country as a resident. Still though, the employee moves for a fixed period of time, which separates short-term relocation from long-term relocation. Things become more complicated when the employee becomes a resident.

Under long-term relocation, the employee moves somewhere for an extensive amount of time. This can be for a year or two, or even indefinitely. The main difference between short-term and long-term relocation is the lack of a fixed end date. Employees who relocate for the long term become residents, though the specific type of residence varies by country. Issues of long-term relocation may include immigration, international taxation, and compliance with local labor laws.

No matter how much time your employee plans to spend in another country, you need to be familiar with the laws that will apply to your continuing employment relationship. 

What to know when your employee wants to relocate

Any type of relocation can be a stressful process for both employee and employer. Visas, immigration, and other concerns often become complicated affairs. Each situation is different, but you can make life easier by understanding more about how relocation works, what to watch for, and how to do the paperwork.

(Psst! Remote can help you with visas, immigration, compliance, and more, including international payroll and benefits. Let us know about your situation and we’ll walk you through it from start to finish.)

1. Fulfilling requirements for immigration and visas

For your employee to move to another country without breaking the law, you need to understand the specific immigration rules in play. Employees must often meet minimum thresholds of residency, for example. Even if your employee takes the responsibility of staying compliant seriously, your business could still face issues if the employee breaks the law unknowingly.

Be careful not to hire someone who does not actually have the right to work in a specific country. Always confirm the employability of a candidate or current employee. It’s possible to have a work permit while still needing sponsorship from a company, for instance.

The concept of taxes is simple: the country where the business operates wants a cut of the business’s revenue. Things get complicated when the company operates with employees in multiple countries. Income taxes and corporate taxes can get messy, and physical residency and tax residency are not always the same thing. Tax treaties between countries dictate which taxes businesses pay and when.

Do your employees want to relocate to another country? Are you looking to hire someone who is moving across borders? Whatever challenges you face, this guide will help you understand more about relocation for international employees.

Guide to hiring international employees

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