5 Challenges of Global Remote Hiring & How to Overcome Them

Following the pandemic, global remote work has become the new norm for companies worldwide. With the increasing availability of technology and the rise of virtual communication tools, the concept of hiring employees from anywhere in the world has become more feasible than ever before.

Although hiring remotely from around the world offers a number of benefits such as a wider pool of talent, cost reduction, new market coverage, etc., it also comes with its fair share of challenges which companies should be aware of.

Below we address a few of those challenges — including cost to hire people, employee experience, cultural differences, etc. — and suggest tested global hiring strategies to overcome them.

1. Cost to hire people

Cost of hiring in different markets can be as much a benefit as a challenge.

It’s a benefit since due to the difference in cost of living, salary expectations can differ from country to country, allowing employers to reduce their payroll burden and save on talent budget.

But the hardest part comes when it comes to normalizing hiring from a salary point of view.

Referring to this during the Global Hiring in the Downturn webinar, Daniel Eisenberg, Head of Expansion at Deel, noted: “Now if I hire a Sales Rep in Spain to cover the Swedish market or I hire sales reps in Sweden to cover the Swedish market, I expect the same output from them. But the salary levels in Sweden are higher than in Spain. So what should I do? Should I normalize based on localized salaries? Or should I compensate based on what expected outcome I am looking for? That’s not an easy one to juggle because all of a sudden you have a team potentially performing the same things. And either one of the candidates makes more than the other, or they make the same but one lives like a king and the other struggles because they live in a different market.”

So, for proper talent normalization companies should do a thorough research before including that into their global hiring strategy.

2. Employee experience

Another challenge is the employee experience, especially when it comes to time differences. When you have people all over the place, you indeed need to consider what the operating hours are.

“When can we have team meetings? When do I onboard managers? Maybe we have an onboarding center in the UK and they work during certain hours. And you’re sitting in Australia, which means you have to have your onboarding in the middle of the night. Maybe or maybe not. So things like that are important to know,” Daniel Eisenberg notes.

Thus, when scheduling events or online meetings, consider the time zone and the fact that your employees may need to work at irregular hours. Adding flexibility to traditional standard hours may be one of the solutions here.

3. Cultural differences

Hiring globally presents a unique set of challenges when it comes to different diverse cultural backgrounds of candidates. These differences in culture can indeed affect candidates’ perception of job requirements, workplace dynamics, communication, etc. So businesses failing to understand those differences can lead to miscommunication, ultimately having a negative impact on the success of the hiring process itself.

“So how do we build a company culture if we are dealing with the cultural differences between Sweden and Spain? How do we tailor? How do we communicate globally? It’s much easier when everybody is in one office and can have beer together. But when we are distributed that becomes a little tricky,” adds Daniel Eisenberg.

Referring to solutions, Huw Sensier points out: “I think just having a more general awareness of the cultural differences in the regions where you might be looking to hire can really have an impact. Similarly with language, specifically one thing I try to avoid as much as possible, is using idioms, for example, which can really have a different meaning depending on which country someone’s based and things like this.”

Another thing to consider when hiring globally, according to Huw, is the bias in the hiring process: “Unconscious bias can definitely impact the hiring process and cultural differences can really exacerbate this problem. So to avoid this I think it’s important to make sure you’ve got a standardized hiring process, [and that] you are training hiring managers on unconscious bias and cultural sensitivity.”

So before drafting your global hiring strategy, get familiar with the culture of the country where you are hiring and search for ways to accommodate your employees.

4. Compliance

Apart from all the challenges mentioned above, one of the biggest ones is obviously compliance.

Each country has its own international regulations, documentation and requirements. So when hiring abroad, how do you keep up with all those global employment laws?

“Let’s say you’re going to hire in six countries. Well, then you need 6 employment contracts. You cannot use a Swedish hiring contract in France and you can’t use the one in France in Germany, although they are neighboring countries. So how do you make sure you can execute all those documents, distribute and hire accordingly? In this sense, compliance can be super challenging and it can be very resourceful, meaning it can be resource draining and that could be a challenge,” Daniel Eisenberg points out.

To sum up, global hiring laws and regulations are something you should constantly observe and keep an eye on, especially because they may be changing frequently.

5. Overwhelming nature of global remote hiring

Most companies that launch the global hiring process, feel pretty overwhelmed by the lack of knowledge on all the aforementioned points, including the compliance and market side, competitive and talent landscape in other countries, etc.

It can be really hard to understand what country to start with. Should the company go to global hiring in Romania, Northern Africa or any other country? Should they start from the time zone, or from where their competitors are hiring?

That’s the set of basic questions that are necessary to start your global hiring strategy.

“I think one of the biggest challenges is really actually how to find the right talent when your talent pool is now global. So rather than narrowing things down you’re actually casting a much wider net in the sense that it’s difficult to really pinpoint how to find the talent and where to find the talent that’s going to help keep increasing the performance of the company as well,” notes Huw Sensier.

According to Huw, to get precise answers to these questions it’s essential to “make sure that you’ve done thorough research and market analysis to really pinpoint where the best talent for your particular vacancies or markets are located and then be able to produce a better strategy for recruitment moving forward after that.”

“And that can be overwhelming [for hiring companies]. So in this context I feel like it is super important to work with the right structure and in that case picking a global hiring partner who would be essentially crucial for the success of the hiring strategy,” suggests Valerio Rossi, CEO of Workfully.

Thus, when incorporating global remote hiring into their hiring strategy, companies can choose to navigate through this complex procedure on their own, using lots of resources since they have no single source of truth. Another alternative — which is much faster and efficient — is finding a relevant global hiring partner to cooperate with.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, with all its benefits, global remote hiring also presents unique challenges that must be addressed to ensure success. By understanding and addressing these challenges, businesses can build a strong, diverse remote workforce that can drive their success.

If you’re one of those businesses looking for a global remote hiring partner to do all the hiring and formalities with no effort from you, you might want to check out our services here.

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