Assign departments, track changes to employment details, and more: September 2023 product release notes

Having just announced our Global HR Platform — which includes our new, free-to-use HRIS and integrated Global Payroll — we’re back with another host of updates to Remote in our mission to make global HR simple for modern, distributed businesses.

Our new dashboard is now extended to your people managers, giving them the at-a-glance information they need about their team. We’ve also added a tracked history of changes to an employee’s job and contract information, so you have better context to make HR decisions.

We know that many businesses work with contractors, and the process becomes so much more complex when you work with many at the same time. Whether you work with five or 500 freelancers, our latest Contractor Management improvement makes onboarding many contractors at once a breeze, from invitations to compliant contracts and signing in bulk.

And for those who are new to Remote or want to explore more, our product tour and tour library are just a click away, so you can see for yourself exactly how Remote can solve more of your HR challenges. 

We can’t wait for you to try out our latest updates. As always, your feedback is invaluable to us, so feel free to share your thoughts, and thanks for being part of Remote's journey to make global HR simple.

What’s new?

ICYMI: Introducing Remote’s new Global HR Platform

Last week we announced our Global HR Platform, a new suite of products designed to unlock a unified, global-first approach to HR for every business.

Now you can scale your global team efficiently, compliantly, and simply at every stage of the employment lifecycle. The Remote Global HR Platform is your single source of truth for worldwide HR and people operations, which means you can ditch the spreadsheets and 10 other tools or providers you’re using and save yourself a lot of time and money.

Our goal is to reshape the way businesses achieve their global ambitions — starting with the way they hire, manage, and pay their teams. Our Global HR Platform includes: 

• Remote HRIS: Now generally available at no cost, companies can add all employees to the platform and manage them from onboarding through offboarding. Remote HRIS includes talent management, time and attendance tracking, expense management, and integrated payroll, with self-service functionality for employees globally through a mobile app or the web. 

• Employer of Record: Companies can hire, manage, and pay employees in countries where they don’t have a legal entity, reducing risk and complexity as they expand. Remote helps companies attract top talent with the ability to offer worldwide equity incentives and country-specific benefits packages at highly-negotiated rates. 

• Contractor Management: Pay and manage international and domestic contractors with automated onboarding and invoicing, localized contracts and tax compliance, and easy payments in multiple currencies without conversion costs. 

• Global Payroll: Consolidate global payroll operations with confidence. Remote enables companies to run global payroll in minutes through a simple interface, powered end-to-end by Remote’s full-stack processes and global knowledge.

• Remote API: Seamlessly integrate global HR functionalities into customers’ preferred tools to securely sync data and improve workflows. As the first and most advanced API for global employment, the Remote API also enables software partners to embed Remote’s global employment services directly within their platforms.

We can’t wait to support you as you grow. Check out our announcement for more information. 

Giving people managers the information they need

Your people managers now see our new dashboard when they log into Remote, bringing key data, insights, and to-dos about their team to the surface.

In seconds, people managers can see:

• Their to-do list, including review requests and invoice approvals

• Quick stats about their team

• Upcoming public holidays for their direct reports

• Who’s away (taking PTO and other types of leave) on their team

• Where their team members are located by country

• Upcoming birthdays in the next week

• And new insights on gender diversity of the team, based on their self-identification

You can assign a Manager to specific employees. Find out more about the Manager role here.

Onboarding employees is now even faster

Our onboarding process is already slick — but we knew it could be even easier.

Now, whenever you:

1. Select the employee type (employee or contractor)

2. Select how they’re hired (via EOR entities or as your own direct employees)

3. Choose how they’ll be paid (via our Global Payroll product or managed via your own payroll process)

We now advance you to the next stage automatically with each selection you make, creating a more streamlined, faster onboarding process for all.

Take a tour around Remote at your convenience

Did you know that Remote offers multiple products to help you consolidate and streamline your global HR process?

Click the Help icon in the top-right of Remote, and you’ll find our Product Tour and Tour Library experiences. Instantly, you can click through core features, workflows, and products to discover how Remote can solve more of your HR headaches.

More automated compliance checks for new EOR team members

As part of our process to streamline the employment process in every country, we’re rolling out:

• Mandatory onboarding vision tests for employees in Bulgaria

• Mandatory safety training for employees in Peru

These are automated for speed and convenience, ensuring you and your team members can start working together as quickly as possible.

Improving time tracking flexibility and alerts

Hot on the heels of our recent time-tracking beta launch, we’ve now made it simple for employees to create a custom work schedule, so they can submit accurate timesheets that reflect their real working hours each week.

This information can be used to calculate payroll: for example, paying overnight or on-call rates where necessary.

Timesheets containing hours worked on the weekend or over a public holiday are now also automatically sent to people managers and account admins for approvals. Find out more about how to view and approve timesheets here.

Track changes to employment details

You can now track changes to contract details (e.g. salary, job title, employment type) for your employees, whether they’re hired via our compliant EOR entities or hired through your own entity and managed with Remote HRIS!

This gives your people managers and HR/people team better visibility and context around decisions made and the employee’s journey with your company. The employee will also be able to view a history of contract updates from their account.

Create compliant contractor agreements in bulk

Working with many contractors can be an administrative and compliance minefield.

You can now create contractor agreements in bulk, following our recent improvements for bulk onboarding and signing. This supercharges the process for hiring and onboarding large numbers of contractors around the world in one go.

Learn how to create contractor agreements after onboarding to find out more.

Use departments to organize and report on employee data

As your business grows, you’ll need to understand your entire team at the departmental level.

You can now assign employees to departments, allowing you to filter and download information about specific groups of employees for further analysis.

What’s coming next?

See benefits in one place

Benefits make up a core part of your employer value proposition, so it’s important to see the exact benefits an employee has access to. Your admins on Remote will be able to see all employee benefits in one place, including how much the benefit plan costs — and you’ll find an easy link to our benefits directory.

Integrate Remote with Sequoia

Our upcoming integration will enable companies to pull new employee data seamlessly from Remote into a Sequoia account, reducing manual effort and automating workflows.

You can keep both platforms in sync, creating employees in Remote from Sequoia or syncing Remote team member data to your Sequoia account.

Thanks for reading, and as always, please contact us with any questions.