Top Tips for Smoothly Onboarding Talent in a New Location

So, you’re setting up shop in a new location — your to-do list is probably already several pages long! One of the most important elements to keep top of mind are the new hires themselves, who can easily become disengaged if onboarding doesn’t go like clockwork. Here are four ways to make it simple and reduce the complexity involved with opening a new office abroad.

Get familiar with your new location

Now’s the time to ensure you’re able to compliantly onboard new staff in your location of choice. It’s essential to understand your options for hiring locally. For example, you might set up your own entity in-country, or if you’re trialing the region or you know that registering a business is a complex process in that location, you might opt for an Employer of Record solution. This can bridge the gap and allow you to see if setting up a more established entity will be worth it in the long run.

If you are looking to bring employees from abroad to launch the new office, remember that each country has its own rules and regulations. For example, in Germany, your company will need to be registered in a physical space before you can hire anyone from abroad, while in France you need a residence permit or to be an EU citizen to open an entity.

In any scenario, if you’re sending existing employees to be your “boots on the ground”, you’ll need to think about work visas and residence permits.

Outside of expat complexities, while each country varies, you’ll usually need to think about:

• Registration: Registering the business itself, registering with the relevant authorities for taxation, and obtaining an employer ID.
• Bank accounts: In addition to creating an account, there may be local capital obligations for opening an entity; for instance, how much money can be deposited during a specific period.
• Appointments: You might need the majority of your staff to be in-country, and you’ll probably need to appoint at least one local director.
• Compliance: What local rules and regulations are there that you might not be aware of? For example, Europe has stricter data protection laws with which you might not be compliant.

Create an onboarding checklist

Once you’re sure that you can compliantly and quickly hire in your new location, it’s time to focus on the employee themselves. What can you do to make sure that their personal onboarding is seamless, and helps them feel like one of the team?

Because you’ve researched the local labor laws and regulations, you should be well placed to ask for exactly the documentation you need and to register the employee with the relevant government agencies quickly and easily.

You might want to offer your new hire some tools that can help them get to know the company and its hierarchy better, like an interactive org chart. This can help new staff to understand how the company works, as well as contacts to reach out to if they have any problems. Especially when an office is new and a company is distributed, this can provide real peace of mind. Other items to put on the onboarding checklist include:

• Setting up IT systems, including password and credential management, and providing devices such as laptop/mobile phone.
• Organizing IAM and data sharing policies, so employees can hit the ground running and don’t get stuck unable to access what they need.
• Benefits administration, from setting up a pension or health insurance, to allocating equity or ensuring new hires are onboarded into ‘perks at work’ systems.

Utilize an employee portal

An employee portal can be a great way to help new hires abroad feel like part of the community, as a company-wide shared tool for employee engagement. At Papaya Global, our employee portal allows our customer’s staff members to view their payslips online, report their paid time off or expenses, track their time and attendance, and ask any questions they might have about their role or the business. Of course, this is all localized to the specific country and its own laws, benefits, and expectations.

You shouldn’t underestimate how valuable this kind of centralized dashboard can be, especially when staff are new and in a faraway location, which might well be in a different time zone to their own. Instead of needing to track down the right person from HR to ask their question about vacation days, or save paper receipts and wonder what the process is for submission – everything can be handled seamlessly online. This shows employees that working across multiple countries doesn’t faze you, and you’re ready to support them according to their own specific needs. In today’s competitive recruitment market, any advantage in onboarding and workforce experience will work to your advantage.

Organize your HR processes

The easier you can make day one for your employee, the more comfortable their landing will be, no matter how long you’ve had an in-country presence. That’s why paperless onboarding and contracts are a great welcome present, making it simple to get all the admin out of the way with compliant localized paperwork for any location. As this process automatically ensures that all of your employee’s data and information is uploaded to a single centralized system with hands-free RPA-based processing, you can guarantee no first month payroll surprises.

Make your day one feel like you’ve “been there, done that” for the employee

Encouraging retention and morale starts before your employee ever sits down at their new desk. Particularly when expanding into a new location, you need to be two steps ahead to smooth out any road bumps.

Papaya Global is a one-stop-shop for international expansion, merging intelligent technology that automates onboarding, payroll, payroll payments, and employee engagement tools, with local in-country expertise on details from taxation to equity and cultural expectations. As the primary contact point between your company and its workforce, payroll and payments account for a huge amount of the connection and loyalty in the relationship. Seen in this light, these processes are actually a strategic tool for talent recruitment, positive onboarding, and retention — when done right.

Looking to streamline the process of entering a new market? Let’s set up a call and map out your goals. 

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