Recruiting overseas? How to save money and get value

Recruiting overseas is challenging. You and your HR team are balancing your priorities with cost management to ensure your employee deployment adds value to your business. Proactive planning is the key to successfully recruiting overseas.

International resourcing strategy

Any cost optimisation should begin by ensuring the international human resource strategy is aligned to your corporate strategy, e.g. growing new markets, developing new products and services and recruiting and retaining the best people.

Cost is one thing but how you define the value international employment brings to your business is as important. You need to be able to measure the quality that renders deployments valuable in the here and now.

Your international resourcing strategy should be based on the nature of your resourcing problem. For example, it might be part of an expansion plan or in response to a client demand. It also depends on the type of international deployment you are proposing. This might be a secondment, remote working set-up or local hire, to name but a few. Hand in hand with this goes the type of employing entity that you need. The requirements differ depending on whether it’s a branch, subsidiary, Employer of Record (EOR) or Professional Employer Organisation (PEO), etc.

Consider the financial aspects. An international deployment typically costs you at least three times the normal cost of an employee. Actual costs differ from planned costs for employer and employee when too narrow a view is taken of where costs lie. Do some cost modelling that includes the impact of recharging, transfer pricing and inflation, and exchange rate fluctuation during the deployment.

How to save money

Where might you look for savings opportunities? Begin with compliance and regulatory-related costs, such as immigration, taxes, social security and relocation, etc.

Costs driven by IHR practices is a huge area. IHR practices range from selection to career incentives, duty of care, ESG, family support, Brexit changes and vendor management. Having oversight of this entire picture and effective control over the disparate processes will prevent costly surprises and loss of value. Look at actual challenges instead of financial goals and generic strategies.

Consider the cost of any additional central or local administrative burden and cross-border coordination and communication. The world has just witnessed the impact of unforeseen costs and risks. No contingency planning also means that unmanaged costs add to the expense of deployment management.

How to get value

Feasibility reviews help you to focus in on root causes rather than symptoms. Use different business scenarios and evaluate types of support possible in each case. Look into the potential impact of assignment extensions, disruption from pandemics and geopolitics, remuneration and benefits planning and changing business challenges. Keep sight of the crux of the problem.

Investment in deploying and relocating key talent to fill critical skills gaps enables international expansion. This depends to some extent on the degree of international maturity of your organisation and HR team. For existing HR teams, this remains a cost proposition, for example, shifting from a transaction-oriented mindset to an increasingly strategic one.

In summary, successful recruiting overseas needs your international resourcing defining in terms of value. Align your HR strategy to the strategic objectives of your organisation. Determine how global mobility supports your employee engagement and performance, and measure the value it creates for your organisation.

Help from global mobility experts

To find out how we can support you with your overseas recruitment and overall people strategy, please contact Steve Asher.