Introduction
Reports suggest that 72.8% of employers face a hard time finding the right employee, and 45% of employers have concerns regarding hiring talent with mandatory work skills.
Due to the multiple challenges of finding the best-suited resource for a role, there are many benefits of expanding employee search criteria horizons. Giving preference to skills over geographical location is a vital step towards a better future workforce.
And thanks to intelligent technologies and cloud storage, most companies are developing robust infrastructure, providing remote access to their employees. There are approximately 4.56 billion internet users in the world. This new way of doing business has blurred geographical boundaries. It has made the environment more conducive for international hiring.
A globally distributed workforce improves the odds of hiring the best fit onboard and helps expand the business to different regions of the world.
What are the benefits of hiring a global workforce?
1. Cultural Exchange
Hiring international employees adds up different cultures, experiences, and diversity to a business, aiding its expansion to new regions.
Further, a workplace with employees from diverse backgrounds can contribute to a realistic approach and generate more ideas during brainstorming sessions.
One of the pioneer examples of a company thriving because of its rich cultural workforce with an innovative mindset is Google. Despite being a US company, 35% of Google’s global workforce is Asian. Google hired many skilled and successful CEOs from countries outside of the organizations’ native land. Prominent names like Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo, Muhtar Kent from CocaCola, Shantanu Narayen from Adobe systems, and Francisco D’Souza from Cognizant are more examples.
2. Creative Perspectives
Employees from the same background have limited experience and skills, which can slow down a company’s growth. People from diverse backgrounds add an element of “creativity” along with professional skills. They bring ideas from the experiences and challenges they encounter in their geographical regions, cultures, and markets.
The blend of various thoughts, perspectives, and experiences can generate unique ideas that can lead your business to new heights.
3. Skilled Workforce
The HR teams get a competitive edge by getting more options to hire a suitable match for a respective role. They can reach out to the best resources located anywhere in the world.
Not letting geographical boundaries limit the will to employ the best talents is a great contributor to a company’s success. Many countries have used the hiring of a skilled global workforce to their advantage.
For instance, out of the total population of the US, 19.1% consists of international migrants. They applied this philosophy of hiring skilled professionals from across the world for their businesses and have improved their overall professional and cultural environment. Many other countries are adopting the same strategy, like Canada, Germany, and others.
4. Competitive Edge
Every country has local labor laws, pension rules, taxation systems, holiday calendars, immigration policies. For instance, the social security contribution of employers is as high as 50% in France. And, the business should approve all billing documents before receiving the payments in some Latin American countries.
Rules and regulations like these can be used to get a competitive edge over other businesses if they are well understood.
The payroll for employees of different countries may differ as well. Many countries hire freelancers around the world to get the best bid.
If your company is looking for a budget-friendly skilled global workforce, searching for good resources can be a herculean task if you don’t go global with your hiring.
5. Business Expansion
There is a big difference between “planning” and “executing” a business activity because many real-time factors work in the background while executing. These factors can be used to improve business performance if the company is aware of them. Ignoring these factors can sometimes lead to disasters.
A local person is well informed about their country’s culture and strong base, which helps businesses track down the best strategy for that area.
You might have come across expansion initiatives like “go local,” “grow local,” and many more. These campaigns aim to combine a local factor along with their standard product. This value addition in the product helps capture a greater market share.
6. Flexible hiring:
Hiring can be very flexible – based on contract, freelancing, permanent, term years, or remote mode. As per an assignment’s timeline, you can also hire from the large reservoir of the global talent pool.
Conclusion
There can be challenges to international HR because of the legal risks and compliance, insurance, complicated onboarding procedure, and termination procedures. But these challenges can be overcome with awareness about the target employee’s country-specific laws and culture. All legal risks can be taken care of by having law experts, PEOs (Professional Employment Organization) or EOR (Employer of Record) from the target country, which is also useful while expanding your business in that area. The challenges of keeping the remote workforce motivated have been bridged by innovative communication tools, tracking systems, employee portals, education sites, and other infotainment applications.