Complete Guide: Hiring Remote Employees in Other Countries

Curious about how to begin hiring remote employees in other countries?

From sourcing digital tools to perfecting your interview techniques, this guide will help lead you to hiring success. Explore five best practices to assist you with finding the ideal team members. If you’re ready to begin navigating the world of remote international employees, read on.

#1 Reevaluate Your Interview Strategy

Finding the best remote worker for any position requires an incisive interview strategy. To make the most of your remote interviews, you’ll need a solid foundation for evaluating candidates and establishing the requirements of the position.

A consistent remote interview process is essential to quality interviews. Consider a streamlined, standardized system for interviews that hits on the following criteria:

• Communicating expectations – Before meeting remotely, provide candidates with a full list of their interview expectations. From platform preference to screen-sharing protocol, send a detailed email accounting for all your specifications. This will help work around any potential tech problems or misunderstandings, and ensure candidates are serious, professional, and able to follow specific instructions.

• Reserving time for questions – Candidates should have time to ask you questions as well. Not only should you allow for questions, but you should also encourage them. Not only can candidate questions allow you to further vet their skills and knowledge, but they could also help you improve your interviewing techniques in the future.

• Shortlisting – The interviewing process typically takes several meetings and exchanges before moving to the hiring phase. Between interviews, create a shortlist document of the best candidates and their respective qualifications. This can help you isolate the variety of qualities of individual candidates and compare them with others.

No matter how well you plan, there’s still room for error. If your video conferencing software fails, it’s important to have a backup plan. Consider investing in multiple devices and accounts, or be prepared to reschedule when an unexpected interruption occurs.

#2 Assess Your Onboarding

After hiring remote workers, it’s your responsibility to provide them with the information and tools they need to succeed. To help foreign employees acclimate to their new roles, start preparing your onboarding strategies in advance of any hiring decisions. You don’t want to find the perfect candidate only to slow down the training process while working on your onboarding protocol.

Procedures will vary, but most businesses can benefit from prioritizing the following aspects of onboarding:

• Responsibilities, tasks, and deadlines – International remote employees need to be able to work independently. By communicating their tasks and responsibilities early on in the onboarding process, as well as the specific dates and deadlines for progress, you can help make the transition into their new role easier.

• Company policy – Every new international employee should receive a copy of the policy guidelines and an employee handbook for your business. You may also consider creating an onboarding program to clarify aspects of your company’s policy to new employees to provide more accountability for you and your team.

• Goal-setting – Adapting to a new environment can take time, but it’s important to begin the goal-setting process early. As your international remote employees learn more about their position, consider ways to encourage higher achievement and explore the long-term goals of your new hires.

Onboarding is a personal process. While it’s crucial to have a plan in place, you should also be flexible and willing to adapt to the needs of each position and team member. Additionally, keep the lines of communication open throughout the onboarding process if your new hire has any questions or concerns.

#3 Find Your Tools

Finding, hiring, training, and retaining remote international employees requires various digital tools. Not only will you need to source the best tools for your business, but you’ll also need to fully familiarize yourself with the functions and interfaces of each one.

Look to the following tools and services to ensure your business is equipped for international remote hiring:

• Digital management software – Organizing a remote office can require significant oversight and planning. Digital management software can assist with creating tasks, assignments, and projects that are accessible to your remote employees. Management tools can be essential for keeping track of job functions and keeping projects moving forward.

• Chat, messaging, and digital communication – Keep in touch with your remote team from across the globe with designated digital communication services. With a range of chat, voice, and video tools, you can support collaboration, increase connection and foster a stronger sense of community.

• Cyber security – Protect your business-critical data with cyber security services capable of maintaining global vigilance. With an international network, you may open yourself up to additional security threats from bad actors. Safeguard your company with encryption tools, server protection, and other cybersecurity tools that are indispensable for the modern business environment.

There are more tools than ever available for remote business operations. Whether you’re interested in examining data analytics or retooling your document-sharing systems, take this opportunity to audit the tools you already have and determine what you need for future success.

#4 Refine Your Management Team

Those directly overseeing your international remote employees need to be fully prepared for the job at hand. As your business expands toward a global workforce, your management team will need to refine their skill sets to fully enmesh with new hires.

Consider reskilling your current management team with a focus on the following:

• Company values – Who you are is just as important as what you do. Whether your employees are right next to you or across the ocean, they represent your organization. The manager and employer should look to reflect and instil company values in international employees and work to refine company culture in the digital realm.

• Encouragement and investment – Your new international team needs to know their efforts will be valued at your business. Encourage your management team to meet with employees one-on-one, to build a real working relationship. This means digital face-to-face meetings, regular check-ins, and shoutouts for a job well done.

• Help and support – Your management team should be available to assist when your remote employees need it. Whether it’s clarification on a current project or a helpful suggestion to make a task a little simpler, managers should lend a hand and offer their expertise whenever possible.

It may be necessary to expand your management team as you open up your business to remote international employees. This can mean another separate round of hires—potentially before you’ve even made your global expansion. It’s all part of building key company infrastructure.

#5 Ensure International is The Best Choice for Your Business

Before posting listings or reaching out to candidates, it’s important to know if remote international employees are the ideal fit for your business. While building your company's global potential offers massive benefits, it could entail more work, complications, and costs than you might realize.

Hiring remote employees in your country could prompt a range of new business expansions, including the following.

Creating entities

Simply defined, a business entity is an organization created to participate in business activities. Whether a single person or a group, a business entity could be represented by any of the following:

• Sole proprietorships
• Partnerships
• Limited liability companies (LLCs)
• Corporations

These entities can offer products or services, retain the property and conduct business in various ways. 

When hiring remote employees in another country, you may be required to create a business entity in the country of residence for your overseas employee. This could incur significant expenses on your end, and for each foreign country of residence, you may need to set up a different entity.

Otherwise, you may want to consider building a partnership with an existing business to legally hire workers remotely. The process may require some heavy lifting, but fortunately, there are alternatives to this traditional hiring method that can simplify it from start to finish.

Human resources (HR)

Your HR team may not be prepared to juggle multiple teams across several countries. Instead, you’ll likely have to create an international HR team tasked with managing business concerns, including:

• International labor laws – Remote employees are typically under the local law and guidelines of their country of residence. Your HR department may need to do some background research regarding international labor practices.

• Benefits and compensation – The expectations for benefits and compensation for remote employees range widely across the globe. Depending on where your employees are located, they may have different interests and demands for employment. The benefits are important to motivate the employees while working remotely.

Payroll and finances

As you build your international team, you’ll likely need to expand your payroll team to accommodate your new hires. So, how do you pay international employees? International payroll might not be as simple as state, local, and federal taxes, and could entail several new processes. Still, you need to make payments to foreign contractors for services.

Your financial team may have to consider the following:

• Additional accounting – With new employees, new tools, and extended departments, your business could be looking at a budgetary overhaul. Your finance team may need an extensive amount of time and manpower to recalibrate and get all of your information in order.

• Country of residence taxes – International remote workers are likely taxed based on their country of residence. For your financial team, this could mean extensive research, unfamiliar paperwork, and more back and forth with foreign governing bodies.

• Federal compliance – When branching out your business to another country (whether that's in North America, the United Kingdom, the Middle East, or even Costa Rica), better know the labor law. You’ll want to ensure all your international labor practices are above board by researching federal compliance statutes and complying with all guidelines and regulations. This may be a joint venture between your financial team and legal counsel.

To help you process the right payment, you might need to find a payroll solutions company to streamline your payroll management system.

Make Hiring Remote International Employees Simple with Playroll

As you’ve seen, hiring remote employees in other countries requires a significant amount of work. It’s no surprise that connecting a network of international employees in a different country is a complex task. Fortunately, if you’re looking to expand business globally, there’s a better way to build an international workforce with help from an employer for record services provider, such as Playroll.

We’re streamlining the remote international hiring process with a simple platform that provides HR, payroll, and business management services. That way, global employment processes go smoothly. Playroll is an all-in-one solution that can minimize costs while maximizing business growth and efficiency. Visit us today to learn more.