Employing global talent will soon be vital for a company’s survival - and help is at hand

Multiplier is a Business Reporter client

If a slew of recent surveys is to be believed, the changes to working life brought about by the pandemic are, in one form or another, here to stay.

In the US and Canada, a quarter of all jobs will be remote by the end of the year, a proportion that will gradually increase as time goes on. Additionally, the so-called Great Resignation, when UK workers quit their jobs in 2021 at a historically high rate, affecting some 85 per cent of businesses, has prompted a majority of UK companies to prioritise employee retention over the traditional centrepiece of planning: growth and expansion.

The decline in available talent in multiple job markets – a trend already in motion in the US and UK before the pandemic – has, meanwhile, accelerated. This has further shifted the balance of power from employer to employee. So significant has this been that advocates of another potential change to our working lives – the move to a four-day week – are claiming that the new frontier for talent competition is quality of life.

The talent crunch has therefore sent employers scrambling to design competitive employment packages to lure the best available candidates. That means agreeing to more flexible working patterns, higher salaries – especially now, given widespread concerns in the UK about the effect rising inflation will have on the decisions candidates make about their employment – and more attractive bonuses. It also means conceding to growing employee demands for more environmentally and socially responsible business practices.

The upshot is that job markets in many advanced economies are now candidates’ markets. And unless employers start to expand their horizons, they run the very real risk that they will be outflanked by competitors who have made the potentially life-saving decision to explore new markets: not at home, but overseas.

Many of the changes brought about by the pandemic may have disrupted traditional working patterns, but so too have they opened up a raft of new opportunities for businesses who are able and willing to be flexible, and to see beyond the local.

If the sudden shift to remote working across the globe in March 2020 showed us anything, it’s that the location of talent shouldn’t be a barrier to hiring. Looking at employment from a global angle negates the need to focus hiring strategies on domestic markets that no longer have labour as readily available as they once had.

Instead, businesses can explore new frontiers in recruitment, knowing that there is not only technology in place to enable efficient and effective remote working, but that experts are on board to make the process of hiring global talent fast and efficient.

Multiplier operates an all-in-one international employment platform that makes it easy for businesses to hire beyond boundaries. It enables an employer in, for instance, Canada to effortlessly onboard, pay and manage a new employee several thousand miles away in the Philippines.

Not only that, but it arranges the employee’s benefits, taxes, insurance and social contributions, all in accordance with local laws and expectations. This understanding of the local terrain is vital if an employer wants to remain competitive when hiring in a country in which it doesn’t have a footprint. There might, for instance, be a tradition of employees’ families being factored into the health insurance package provided by a company – and it requires local research of the kind done by Multiplier to ensure that issues such as this are recognised and realised in any global hiring strategy.

Given, therefore, that even candidates in less advanced economies will likely have job options to choose from, a faraway company that proves it can ensure their expectations are taken care of while removing any administrative burden from them will immediately have that competitive edge.

HR professionals have reported that the search for talent is taking up increasing amounts of their day. This is partly reflective of the state of domestic job markets in the US and UK, but that’s not the whole story: companies are still wasting precious time focusing their efforts on finding local hires.

This speaks to the multiple benefits that solutions such as those provided by Multiplier bring. It lessens the workload placed on the company seeking new hires, allowing the people now tasked with searching out new talent to return the focus of their work to the kind of pastoral support that sustains a workforce and generates an attractive working environment. It also opens up the ability to hire in countries where salary expectations are lower, thereby allowing companies to develop a more sustainable long-term growth strategy.

The proof is in Multiplier’s record. Some 80 per cent of its clients have been able to successfully build global engineering teams from India, Serbia, Vietnam and Brazil, and to scale faster. If they had focused on hiring within their own countries, this simply would not have been possible. One client, an SME in Australia, was even able to build a 100-member team of employees solely from the Philippines.

The company has also provided solutions to enterprise clients seeking help with contracting or managing their contingent workforce, and ensures that its solutions can be widely applied: it has been able to help clients across oil and gas, renewables, technology and engineering, as well as some of the top 10 auditing firms, access a wide variety of talent.

By both outsourcing the compliance aspects of hiring to a global employment partner and looking beyond the local market for candidates, companies are therefore able to remove several administrative burdens while vastly increasing the pool of talent – and, in the process, bringing sustainable growth back as a central focus of business planning.

Hiring globally has long been an option for companies looking to grow. In a post-pandemic world, however, it is now arguably necessary for survival. Having experts on hand to enable the acquisition and management of new employees ensures expansion that is driven by skills and talent, and is not constrained by borders.

For more information please visit www.usemultiplier.com

Originally published on Business Reporter