Welcome to the Bringing the Human Back to Human Resources
podcast. I'm Tracy Chernoff, and I've
spent my entire professional career in HR.
Each week, we'll explore the delicate balance between people
and business with the aim to reconnect the two and create
meaningful outcomes. Listen in as I share my own
experiences, challenge the status quo, and chat with guests
from various industries about our mission to bring the human
back to human resources. Hi everyone, welcome back to the
Bringing the Human Back to Human Resources podcast.
Thank you so much for being here for another week.
This week I have an exciting guest and actually I think every
time I have a guest it's exciting, but I like to say it
anyway because it feels nice. And so with me this week I have
Susan Snipes, who is the head of people at Remote People, a
global recruitment agency that specializes in direct placements
for US based and Europe based companies looking to hire remote
workers across the globe. Susan, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you, Tracy. It's great to be here.
Amazing. I'm so glad you're here.
And you know, global hiring continues to be a huge topic.
It's something that I think can often be met with either some
misunderstanding and sometimes a little bit of confusion.
And I say that because I have seen where people are like so
excited about global hiring, as they should be, if you ask me.
And then I've seen people who have the opposite of an
abundance mindset and are worried that they are going to
lose their jobs, to quote UN quote, offshore hiring, which I
think is really a very narrow way to look at it.
Because when we hire globally, that means we're, we're
expanding our opportunities to learn from people in different
backgrounds and all of that good stuff.
And I know we're going to talk about, talk a lot about remote
people and specifically how companies can hire globally
without a ton of friction or red tape because of course, there's
a lot operationally that comes in to play when hiring globally.
So maybe we start with, you know, what remote People does
and you know specifically as an employer of record, which you'll
get into I'm sure what that actually means and what it does.
Yeah, absolutely. So Remote People is not only a
an international recruitment firm that helps place remote
workers in 150 plus countries, but we also offer employment of
record services. And so you know, employer of
record is the employer for legal and tax purposes.
And you would partner with an employer of record when you want
to hire in multiple countries, but you don't want to have to
set up your own local entity effectively.
So we offer both the recruitment and the employer of record
services. Amazing.
I think it's really helpful to have that understanding because
I think I shared with you when we first spoke before recording
that my first experience even using an employer record has
been in the last three years and I've been in HR for over 10.
And so I, I just think it's probably very likely that there
are listeners who have only worked in companies who have
established local entities in various parts of the world.
And so having an understanding, understanding of what that is
can help. And my understanding too is that
creating or establishing local entities is quite challenging,
especially depending on the country you're looking to hire
in. And then that's like, is that
one of the reasons why people would potentially look at an EOR
or employer record versus establishing their own business
presence? There are lots of good reasons,
but you definitely hit the nail on the head with one of the
reasons being that it is time consuming and expensive to get
local entities formed and set up in place in these different
countries. And a lot of times companies,
they just want to focus on what they do best.
They want to focus on their operations, they want to focus
on making money. They don't want to focus on all
of the administrivia and overhead of figuring out how to
get set up in different countries, especially when they
don't need to reinvent the wheel because they're already
companies out there that will hire your employees for you and
employ them for you and take away a lot of the administrative
burden. So that's part of it.
Another good reason would be maybe you want to hire
completely. I'm sure I'm gonna say this more
than once in this podcast, but hire Without Borders and have
have employees irrespective like regardless of where they are
located in the globe. Maybe you just want to be able
to hire the top talent wherever they are.
And so you may have one employee in Argentina, one employee in
China, one employee in Pakistan, one employee in Canada, and you
want to have the freedom to do that without setting up a bunch
of different entities. That's another great reason to
go with an employer of record. And it's also a great way to
just test a market too. So say you are wanting to build
out a sales team in Switzerland. You've never worked in
Switzerland before. You don't know how to reach the
customers there, but you need to hire local sales people so you
can reach the customers there. It's a great way to test the
market to see if that's going to be successful for you or not.
Going with an employer of record, since that's already set
up and already in place. That's a really good point.
It, it does make me think about what I kind of talked about at
the top of the recording, which is that there is such a benefit
to hiring globally. I see it as something that it
should instill a sense of pride in people when you work for a
global organization or when you have colleagues who are all
across the world, because I think this is one of the
greatest benefits of a room. You know, a more remote culture
these days where people can work from home and you can and you do
have the ability to hire the best and the brightest, as I
like to say, wherever they live, regardless of where they live.
And I, I don't know, I've seen recently where people and of
course there, there have been layoffs and there, you know,
there are always changes in the job market in the US and around
the world. But I've seen where people will
talk about global hiring strategies without this more
positive or optimistic lens, maybe because they've been
affected or they perceive to have been affected by global
hiring strategies. Because when you know, of
course, when there's access to talent anywhere, there are
certainly advantages in higher to hiring in different places
around the world compared to more expensive locations like
maybe some other parts of Europe or in the US.
That said, though, when we think about like this evolution of
global hiring and how much the workplace has been transformed
by this ease of hiring, let's say, especially with with thanks
to Eors, how do you see the landscape having changed in the
last few years? And maybe it's also like, how
has it changed and how will it continue to change?
Definitely. And also to speak to the concern
that some people have about outsourcing and people losing
their jobs. And I'll say that the number one
reason that we're hiring in other countries for people that
we're doing recruiting is because there's a talent
shortage. There's a shortage of talent.
Like, for example, we help AI companies hire AI talent in
multiple countries around the world, but not necessarily in
the US because there's a talent shortage here.
And so, you know, that's a common misconception that people
have is that it's, it's all about all about saving money,
although it is a cost savings as well, like to your points.
And companies are seeing that they can have that strategic
advantage by hiring in places with lower cost of living,
especially if people have the same credentials, the same skill
set. It, it does seem like a better
deal to go that route. Other changes that I've seen
just in the technology and in the way that we work, you know,
we have the project management applications, the instant
messaging applications, we have all of these tools that provide
the appropriate level of oversight needed, depending on
how much oversight you you feel like you need to have over your
remote workforce. You can have that now because
the technology is there. And so people are less worried
about accountability and, you know, having people not seated
directly next to you. You know, remote hiring in
general is on the rise. And something I heard a
recruiter say that what she's seeing is that in the US once
about a third of all people that they're hiring for have a strong
preference for remote work. And and then another third is
remote hybrid. And so you're, and you're
looking at, so you're looking at only only about 1/3 left that's
interested in physical in person work, but but there just aren't
there remote jobs there to support that.
So that's, that's where it's trending is more and more remote
jobs, more and more remote work, but it's not trending fast
enough for all of the employees who enjoyed remote work during
the pandemic and didn't want to go back and still don't want to
be back. And so I'm just seeing that as
well. Very interesting.
And I, I appreciate you helping us to see what you know within
this landscape, what is really generating this interest and the
need to hire globally. And when there is a talent
shortage, I mean, you can't just always work without like with a
-, 1 businesses obviously have to continue to operate.
And so if you're going to have the, you either have the option
of always being a person down or being strategic and finding that
person potentially in a completely different country or
halfway around the world. You mentioned at the top of the
recording that or at the top of the podcast that one of the
benefits to working with an EOR or having an EOR as a vendor
within a company is the are the legal and the tax benefits.
Can you kind of help us to understand how companies kind of
overcome those complexities between taxes and legal
compliance and maybe even payroll?
Because of course that's connected between both.
How does an EOREOR help with those things?
So rather than having to rely on a local, a local accounting firm
to handle all of the taxes and a local law firm to handle all of
the formation and another specialization of law firm to
handle all your employee relations issues, you can have
one point of contact. And in particular with remote
people's employer of record services, we have a dedicated
account manager. So people are getting that one
point of contact. And even just within the
employer of record, I know that's a pain point, you know
some people have with some of those other folks out there who
I won't mention. But they.
They will send you to just whoever is on the chat at the
time is who you're talking to and they have no context about
your workforce. It's whoever's on the the AI
chat bot, whoever, whatever human jumps on there, that's who
you get. And so we don't have that
problem at remote people, which is nice.
Nice. It does make me think about like
if you can share even an example of how a company maybe that's
worked with you or even it just in your experience in general,
if there's like a real world example of a company that's
scaled globally. Because again, to share my own
experience, I joined the tech company that I work for three
years ago and I had never had an experience with an EOR.
And we were already, we were scaling and I had joined as we
had already established working with this particular, you know,
organization. And there are certainly, I think
the benefits are are really important and also understanding
that there are companies that have done it like bigger, really
big companies probably too that continue to scale globally.
So I'm curious if you have any and have the inside scoop.
Yes, I'll, I'll just name drop briefly just two, two names
people have probably heard of are IBM and Boeing.
And those are, you know, two of our customers who we've helped
to hire global talent and, you know, give them that competitive
advantage, so. We love a name drop here at at
the podcast that they're bringing the human back to human
resources podcast. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing. Love it, love it.
Inside scoop. And Speaking of competitive
advantage, I'm curious, like are there specific industries?
Because of course the listeners kind of span all industries and
all, even all types of HR roles. And I'm curious to know if there
are companies or I should say industries, excuse me, that are
better suited for leveraging an EOR to scale their businesses?
So I will say the majority of our customers tend to be SAS
companies. So they're in the tech industry.
And I think a lot of that has to do with the tech industry's
readiness to hire remote workers.
It's something that they've been doing for years and years now.
It's not new to them. There are obviously some
industries that are just from a practical perspective, there may
only be a very few number of position of positions where
people even could work remotely. Like the construction industry,
you're only going to have maybe, maybe there's some admin type
positions or some project management type positions where
some of the work can be done remotely.
But the reality is that a lot of that has to be done in person.
But in addition to the tech industry, I mean on our website
we have all the different industries that we've supported
so far and there's a good 20 plus industries listed out
there. So including healthcare, believe
it or not. So there are positions, there
are certain types of roles that you have to ask yourself, is
there any reason that this position would have to be on
site? Really Like is there really a
reason that for, for, for all the employers that are making
everybody go into the office? Do they really need to be there?
What, why are we doing this? These are questions we have to
ask ourselves. Absolutely.
I ask those questions all the time, every like every week.
I feel like there's another large company that's saying
we're forcing, and I use that word very intentionally forcing
our employees to go back. And like you and I, we're HR
people. We know even if we we're in
person, we are like hybrid. We know that requiring or
mandating in person work when people are so used to working
remotely these days, especially in the industries that you've
kind of already named, there's there's no, there's no world in
which that like recipient of that information, the employees
at the end of that decision are like super happy that their
employer is just telling them what to do.
Like, I can't imagine saying to myself as a, you know, in HR, as
an HR professional, I'm going to tell all of these employees that
they have to return to work five days a week in person and it's
going to go really well. Like, I just can't, I can't
imagine that, you know? So it does make me wonder why so
many companies are pushing for this and really kind of missing
the mark in terms of how they bring their teams into solving
whatever problems they feel they're solving by bringing
people back 100%. Conspiracy theory.
I this, this is my husband's conspiracy theory on this, that
they have so much real estate that they deduct, they deduct,
they deduct the costs for tax purposes and they need to have
people actually working in these buildings that they're deducting
from their tax like otherwise their expenses become too low
and then they have issues with their taxes.
That's the, that's the theory. I'm not qualified to speak on
this topic. It is a conspiracy theory.
I, I love that your husband has a conspiracy theory on this.
I mean, it's a very interesting point.
I don't know that it's so far fetched because I mean they're
the corporate real estate market right now from my understanding
is not so great because there are so many office buildings
that are just vacant and so many retail spaces just vacant.
That's really interesting though.
And I am, as someone who has virtually no experience in tax
law or anything like that, I wonder like, well, if they're
working hybridly or in a hybrid way, does that not count?
Like do they have to work 100%? Yeah.
Can't we give people flexibility benefits?
You know, right, right. Like why not be able to, why not
allow people to come in when on whatever day works for them?
Maybe you say, OK, at least one day a week you get your tax
benefit or whatever. If we're going to go with that,
I say we go with it. And you know, maybe you maybe on
that one day, that's when you're having like your all hands, your
team meeting. And but I mean, at the end of
the day, like I think that sometimes companies are, they're
pushing their own interests too hard on employees.
Because at the end of the day, like when I think about what,
what shifts we saw during like the COVID time, for example, it
was very reflective of employees being in the driver's seat and
employers kind of being on the in the passenger side and
allowing the employee to kind of drive the landscape forward.
And from that, we got a lot of obviously remote benefits.
Many people continue to work remotely and people have shifted
their their experiences have pivoted in industries as a
result of being able to work remotely too.
All of that said, though, I think now we're seeing, you
know, the pendulum swung all the way that way.
And now the pendulum is, well, they're attempting to swing the
pendulum all the way to the other direction.
And I feel like it's just a little bit more complex than
saying, OK, every single person has to go in the office.
And especially when we think about again, this like global
hiring strategy, if that's the case for these larger
businesses, then they have to think about how they engage
their global workforces. And if they require, you know,
in office work from let's say US or Canadian employees, how do
they? How do they then take that and
replicate it globally if they don't really have, you know, a
larger cohort in particular areas, especially if they're
using an EOR? So I just, you know, I think
it's, I think it's a little bit of a reach to expect that people
are just going to be happy doing whatever their company wants
them to do. I don't know, I feel a little
strongly on that. Yes, well, and, and it, and it
backfire is it will backfire because as more and more
employers move towards offering remote work, at some point,
it's, it's going to go from being just this awesome perk
that you're lucky if you can get to expected for certain roles.
It's going to be expected and you're going to have a really
hard time hiring people if you're going to put your foot
down and say no. This is on site in person.
Work totally, totally. And I mean, I get it.
I I've had guests on who have talked about, you know,
generational differences in the workplace and how remote work
and in office work, hybrid whatever are sometimes do vary
depending on generation or the generation, you know,
represented. And interestingly, Gen.
Z sometimes, you know, or more often than not, I should say,
wants all of the flexibility to determine what their work week
looks like while also having the opportunity to be in person as
often as they want and to be remote as often as they want.
And, you know, you have other generations in the work for in
the workplace who are kind of polarized on that.
It's like either fully remote or fully in person.
And then Gen. Z comes in saying, well, we kind
of want options for all of it, and we want full, you know,
autonomy and determination. So I think, you know, coming
back to it. Yeah, go ahead.
Please. Well, but a lot of times for
Gen. Z where they're working is all
they've known. So if they're working in person
and that's their exposure to being employed, that's all
they've known. So their objection to it might
not be as strong as a millennial that is like, look, I've done
both. I've, I've worked both, I've
worked remote, I've worked on site remote works better for me
and my work life balance. And you know, just I, I, I think
there, there is something there to like having less experience
in the workforce and less of a point of reference to be morally
outraged. No, I.
Love it. No, it's true.
I mean, I was just talking to my sisters in law about stuff like
this where it's like, you know, what is the benefit of
experience? And when we first start out in
our careers, we have we especially depending on the type
of training people have, they've gone to school for the careers
that they've had someone's in HR and maybe they've held
internships or whatever. However we want to apply this
that it's like, yeah, you have a certain level of experience and
you you kind of know what you want out of your career.
You have a certain expectation for yourself and all of that is
true and you are a qualified individual.
And yet when someone has 510152030 plus years of
experience, they have all of that plus all of like this
knowledge and information that someone with much less
experience doesn't have. And so it's like, how do, how do
we appreciate the experiences that we all eventually gain
while actively putting in the years of tenure?
It's a, it's an interesting, it's almost like complex because
we all are in a place in our careers where we have a certain
amount of experience and we want something specific.
And then there will always be people with more experience who
also want something specific. And that's not always like a
match made in heaven. And so it's like, how do you
reconcile all of that? To me, it's like, OK, we'll
offer flexibility and everyone can be as close to happy as
possible because you're never going to make everybody happy.
Yeah, that's tough. But an elusive, elusive
happiness. I know employee engagement,
happiness, fulfillment, like how do we get everybody happy?
All the buzzwords. No, but I really appreciate that
we've, you know, kind of dug into this idea of how the
landscape, you know, has changed and will continue to change.
And it does also, you know, make me think further about some of
the the complexities when it does come to, you know, a
company hiring internationally. Coming back to this, you know,
obviously from a tactical operational standpoint, they're
all those challenges that you mentioned, which, you know,
certainly enable companies to look in the direction of an EOR
to reduce that those challenges. But from like a cultural
standpoint, what are your thoughts around how companies
can navigate those types of challenges hiring
internationally? Like how is there a, is there a
way that companies can future ready themselves or be as
prepared as possible to bring on talent in various parts of the
world that where people have different cultures and beliefs
and practices? Because that certainly has an
impact. Yeah.
So you still want to recruit for people whose values align with
your company's values and, you know, people whose work ethic
aligns with what you're looking for in an employee.
You still want to thoroughly vet people.
There are some things that there are certain realities that you
may need to be willing to accept and be flexible as a global
employer. You're going to hire people in
other countries where they have a lot more entitlements than we
have in the US, They have a lot more time off, a lot more
banking holidays. There may be religious
observances, depending on the country that go on for a month
at a time. I mean, there are there are
certain operational realities that you have to prepare for
depending on where you're looking to hire.
But All in all, just to be able to have 24 by 7 support because
you have people in all the time zones that you need to have them
in, you know, it's, it's great. And you don't have to worry
about, oh, no, we're giving like we're hiring people for this,
this third shift or this, this undesirable shift because for
them it is a desirable shift. And, and they don't have to work
at, at odd hours. If you're 24 by 7 or if you're
not 24 by 7 and you're hiring in a country and the hours are a
little off, the compensation that you're offering probably is
enough to offset the inconvenience on their part.
Plus you're still saving money depending on where you're
hiring. So yeah, I may have gone a
little off topic there. No, you didn't.
I, I think it's really helpful and actually it makes me think
of probably one of my last questions for you, which is
really like how we can give some advice maybe to HR professionals
who are listening and, and maybe thinking about how they look at
the future of remote work, how they think of the future of
global hiring. Because I think you've said a
lot of really important things that there's, this is all about
strategy, like how do companies best set themselves up so that
they can continue to have a competitive advantage and
continue to scale and, and grow. So with that, what advice do you
have for those listening and how you know especially and I should
say HR leaders and other business leaders in terms of
navigating this future of remote work and also just global hiring
in general? I'm going to say it again, we're
going to hire Without Borders. They are going to get the best
and brightest wherever they may be located on planet Earth.
And we're not going to stress about it because we have the
support of global recruitment agencies and employers of
record. Whether you're needing to hire
someone as a contractor or due to compliance issues, you need
to hire them as an employee. There are companies out there.
You don't need to reinvent the wheel.
You can leverage the resources that already exist.
You don't have to do this from scratch and just, you know, lean
in and find the best vendors with the best value proposition
for you and your organization and you'll do great things.
I love it. Hire Without Borders.
I think that's fabulous. Susan, thank you so much for all
of your insight and for sharing more about what you do and what
Remote People does. And so I'd love to give you the
opportunity to tell listeners where they can learn more about
you as well as Remote People. Sure.
Well, I'm not super important, but I will tell you that if you
want to learn more about remote people, you can go to
remotepeople.com. We we snagged, we sure snagged
that domain. That's right.
Yeah, I love it. imeanitsnot.net, itsnot.org,
its.com. I love it and you are important.
You are important. You are Susan Snipes, you're
important, everyone's important. Thank you so much for joining
the podcast. I, I think it was such a helpful
conversation. Actually, I think this is the
first time that we've even talked about EORS and, and
probably global hiring in this way.
So I really, really appreciate you educating all of us.
Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thank you, Tracy.
Of course. Hey, just before you go, don't
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