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As the workplace continues to experience major transformations due to the coronavirus pandemic and other factors, some core HR operations keep changing, too. Namely, the way companies hire and onboard employees is undergoing a massive shift.
With employers now more able than ever before to access a global pool of talent, fresh challenges and opportunities are arising. Are you interested in learning more? This article on global hiring and onboarding has you covered.
Global hiring simply refers to the HR practices involved in recruiting employees who are not located geographically close to their employer. These employees may be located in a nearby city, in another state, or on a different continent altogether.
As you might imagine, recruiting such a geographically dispersed talent pool can be incredibly complex, especially if your company chooses to handle everything independently. There are, however, better and more efficient global hiring strategies, such as teaming up with an international Professional Employer Organization (PEO) or an Employer Of Record (EOR).
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Working from home avoids commuting, and fewer commuters result in
lower greenhouse gas emissions.
One of the most attractive benefits of recruiting global staff is that it allows your organization to access a much larger pool of candidates. As a result, you're more likely to find highly skilled applicants who can fulfill all the requirements of the positions you're looking to fill.
Hiring internationally also supercharges your company's global expansion. Local employees tend to have a wealth of knowledge and expertise in their regional markets. Your organization inherits this knowledge when you hire international employees, and you can use it to seize better and more successful business opportunities in those regions in the future.
Employing a diverse and inclusive workforce is no longer simply a nice-to-have feature of a company: it’s a necessity. Social justice, equity, and fair opportunities are growing into increasingly higher priorities on the agendas of both governments and corporations.
Hiring global employees allows businesses to build a diverse, multicultural team, which can vastly improve and strengthen your company’s culture, enhance its reputation, and boost its competitiveness on an international scale.
Traditional HR recruitment practices can be extremely costly, particularly when hiring domestic employees. Recruiting international talent, on the other hand, can often be more affordable, especially if your organization decides to collaborate with a savvy external partner like Skuad.
For example, you might consider hiring employees from a country with a much lower cost of living than where your company is located. By doing so, you can offer a salary that affords your employees a high standard of living but doesn't break the bank on your end.
As you start to build your global workforce, here are some ways to optimize the process and make sure it runs smoothly for everyone involved.
Creating a stellar candidate experience is key if you want your international hiring process to succeed. To achieve this, work on building coherent, consistent, and compelling interactions with all of your applicants across all the different touchpoints of their journey with you.
Having an easy-to-use, user-friendly, and standardized hiring platform, for example, can help candidates optimize their time and effort, while at the same time presenting your company as one that puts its employees at the core of its operations.
Another vital aspect to consider is data security and legal compliance. This becomes especially important — but also more challenging — when dealing with candidates based in different countries.
There are many security and compliance factors to pay attention to in the global hiring process, including:
Because of the intrinsic difficulties of navigating such complex systems, opting to work with a partner that offers global hiring solutions goes a long way toward minimizing the hassle and risk your company has to take on.
As mentioned earlier, creating a diverse team of talent is now a requirement in the corporate world, especially for companies planning to expand internationally. It's also one of the best strategies to ensure a solid, successful global hiring process. This is because both job applicants and consumers across all sectors highly value brands that prioritize building a multicultural and inclusive workforce.
To this effect, companies should always state very clearly that their job openings are aimed at a diverse pool of applicants, regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, and other elements of individual identity. It may also help to showcase diversity and inclusion through marketing materials, such as case studies, social media posts, blogs, or videos.
In the context of the workplace, onboarding refers to all of the activities that help a recruit settle into the company and feel valued, empowered, and supported. Onboarding processes can be both formal and informal. Successful onboarding is essential, as it leads to better employee productivity, satisfaction, and retention rates.
Formal onboarding includes all the structured, organized tasks and processes that support new staff members as they get started in their roles. These are, for example, orientation activities, training, and regular coaching sessions.
Informal onboarding, on the other hand, is more about making your new team member feel welcome and at ease with their co-workers and managers from a personal and behavioral point of view. These activities include shadowing and informal meetings or outings, as well as providing them with work-related gadgets, swag, and equipment.
For many companies, global hiring often means bringing on remote workers from different regions of the world. If this is your first time establishing a multicultural remote workforce, you might need to build some new habits for onboarding international employees. Here are a few strategies to help you get started.
If you thought that onboarding started on the day your new employee joins your company, think again. For onboarding to be truly effective, it’s a good idea to get things started even earlier. For example, put together a welcome kit for your recruit and send it to them a week or so before their start date.
The kit can contain both fun, branded gadgets (think company mugs, pens, and coffee thermoses) and any tech tools and equipment they might need for their roles, such as a smartphone and laptop. Make sure all the lengthy, dull paperwork is taken care of before your new employee’s first day, too, so they can get on with their tasks in a quicker, smoother, and more pleasant way.
Few things are more complicated to convey to remote hires than your company’s culture. But this doesn’t mean it’s impossible — you’ll just need to get more creative and put a bit more effort into building virtual experiences for your global employees. Well-thought-out activities can help new employees genuinely feel like a part of your team and start to build their understanding of your company’s ethos.
For instance, consider organizing a virtual tour of your physical office as well as your company’s history, managers, and staff. Your existing employees can pre-record themselves talking about their role within the company, how long they've been there, and what they love about their job.
Next, you could share video testimonials of some of your happiest and longest-term customers, so your new hires can hear about what makes your company great from your customers’ point of view. Finally, remember to grant your new employee access to any intranet, collaboration, and communication platforms, such as Slack, AirTable, and Notion.
Arguably one of the most vital aspects of making your global onboarding process an utter success is to take advantage of video content. Videos are extremely compelling and interactive ways to convey a huge range of messages. They're also affordable, convenient, and easy to access from most platforms and devices, regardless of where your global employees are based.
Start by scheduling a welcome video call between your new hire and their manager. This will help the two of them get to know each other and give your new employee time to familiarize themselves with their role, duties, and responsibilities. To keep breaking the ice, consider arranging a separate video meeting with the rest of the team — this one is just as important but can be somewhat less formal.
Organizing regular team bonding activities over video chat is another great way to ensure the successful onboarding of your new team member. Here, you can get as creative as you like. From weekly virtual coffee chats to Friday evening “drinks” and monthly gamification activities, the choices are plentiful.
Just remember to always use a secure, high-quality, and encrypted video platform that can be used and accessed whenever and wherever your global recruits are.
Hiring and onboarding global talent are two excellent ways to grow your company internationally. But both processes present a series of complex challenges that most small and medium businesses are simply unequipped to tackle on their own.
There’s no reason for your business to do it alone: team up with Skuad, your global employment and payroll platform that makes global hiring and onboarding seamless. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help you build your international dream team.
Catalina Wang is a Human Resource Consultant. She manages recruitment, onboarding, and contract administration staffing for many organizations and remote teams. She’s passionate about efficient HR management and the impact of tech on hiring practices.
