Managing overseas employees is challenging and requires utilising specialised services and establishing a complex communication network. However, an international workforce offers numerous advantages that can help your business stand out in its niche. Regardless of whether you create an overseas branch of your company or a team of freelancers dispersed all over the world, you’ll need to prepare in advance. This means you’ll need to have solutions in place that will resolve any issues fast. Only this way will your overseas hiring project provide your business with a huge boost.
Why You Should Start Hiring and Managing Overseas Employees
There are many reasons why a business might need to hire overseas employees. The most important of them depend on the nature of your business itself. For example, manufacturers can benefit from opening an overseas branch in a country where they can establish a more cost-effective production line. Creative businesses, on the other hand, can benefit from hiring freelancers from diverse countries, as each individual brings a unique talent and perspective.
While the exact role of the overseas workforce for your business can vary, the benefits you can get from hiring people abroad are generally the same:
- You get local representation when it’s needed.
This benefits businesses that want to take over a new foreign market. - Increased employee productivity.
If your overseas employees work remotely instead of in an office you open in their country, you benefit even more. According to multiple surveys, remote workers are more productive. And many people today (about 85% of millennials, to name a few) are willing to accept a lower salary if they can work from home. As you are likely hiring abroad to save money in the first place, saving even more is a definite plus that can significantly alter the entire business plan for this expansion. But bear in mind that this plan will only succeed if you establish an efficient system for managing overseas employees. - Cultural diversity.
Having people from different cultures work together enhances creativity and enables your team to develop better products through diverse perspectives. - Access to highly-skilled professionals.
If your business requires hiring top-quality professionals with particular skills, there might not be any available. By hiring overseas, you gain access to a great variety of experts.
Challenges of Managing Overseas Employees & How to Overcome Them
1. Expensive international payments
To finance your business’s overseas branches, you’ll need to set up an effective and affordable route for B2B international money transfers. And if you are hiring freelancers from all over the world, you will need the same kind of service to pay them. The key is to find a money transfer platform that won’t charge you a substantial fee and exorbitant currency exchange rates, as banks often do.
Utilise online money transfer companies that also act as foreign exchange brokers to secure the best possible deals. Your best options are MoneyCorp, TorFX, and World First. Be sure to check the companies’ reviews before creating an account and making a transfer. You’ll be sending money through those platforms, so you must be 100% certain of their security and reliability.
2. Legal issues
What exactly is the legal status of your overseas employees? How can they work for your company legally? Ensuring that everything is set up by the law is essential for managing overseas employees. If you don’t do this, you might end up in jail over some missed paperwork.
To hire outside of the UK, businesses must apply for a sponsor licence and prove that they are a legitimate business seeking employees for legitimate reasons. As so much legal paperwork needs to be completed, it would be beneficial for your company to hire legal help like these solicitors in Stockport, as they specialise in business immigration services. Clifford Johnston & Co. are legal experts who can help you through the process.
As you will be dealing with a foreign country, you will need to get legal counsel from a local attorney. Moreover, you will also need to discuss this matter with your own legal counsel to develop the best method of hiring overseas employees without breaking any laws.
3. Communication issues
When managing overseas employees of any kind, including international freelance teams, communication becomes one of the biggest challenges. Today, technology can significantly help solve this problem. You can easily stay in touch and even set up group video chats using various messenger apps, Skype, and many other tools that allow people to communicate online effortlessly.
Time Differences and Language Barriers
However, there are also matters of time difference and language barriers to consider.
Time-related issues should be resolved with clever scheduling. You will also need to plan your team’s tasks in a way that allows everyone to work during their peak performance period. As you can’t demand that your employees deny their natural circadian rhythms to work with someone seven hours ahead, you might need to break down the task into parts managed by smaller groups.
The language barrier, however, is much harder to overcome. Of course, providing your employees (both local and overseas, if they need to work together) with language classes is essential. However, even the best teacher cannot make a group of students master a foreign language perfectly within a few months.
When managing overseas employees, one key thing to do is to encourage them to engage in social situations. In this case, you should run a group chat as well as organise regular (and frequent) informal discussions. This will be a great opportunity for them to practice and improve their language skills. Such communication also helps learn slang and other types of informal speech, which are rarely covered in language textbooks.
Additionally, regular communication of this kind will help your employees bond, which in turn will increase their overall productivity. As they bond, they will understand each other better, making it easier for them to work together and for you to manage them.
Such sessions will also help reduce issues caused by cultural differences if you ensure that some of these discussions focus on this specific topic.
The Bottom Line: Hiring Overseas Employees Will Help You Succeed
Experts predict that by 2020, over 50% of the workforce will be freelancers, and that’s only in the US. Some countries are far ahead in that race. It’s not a surprise considering the benefits of hiring overseas professionals to help your business shine.
Don’t be afraid to take this step in order to move your company to the next level. You can utilise various tech solutions available today to manage overseas employees or international teams of freelancers. Those will help ensure that everyone works smoothly together and that your business uses all the advantages gained from this expansion to the fullest.
