When businesses grow and work in different countries, managing international employees isn’t the simplest. You have to deal with different cultures, laws and zones to efficiently manage a workforce that are all working towards the same goal.
Even with there being challenges, having a team spread out across the globe brings huge advantages. It gives businesses chances to come up with new and exciting ideas with there being all the different viewpoints that come from it.
This also helps them reach more customers in different parts of the world. You need smart and careful ways to handle your employees to make this work effectively. It’s about making sure everyone feels like part of the team and is working together properly.
This guide will give you easy-to-follow steps and good advice for managing international employees while getting the most out of it. This is for both new company hires, as well as your first overseas worker in a big company wanting to improve how you work worldwide.
We’ll show you how to understand different cultures, follow various rules, talk clearly across distances and build a strong team that works well together, no matter where they are.
Make sure to continue reading this insightful guide so that you can effectively manage international employees for increased business success. This can be your key to making your company thrive worldwide.
Advantages of International Employees
Entry into New Markets
Exploring the overseas business landscape can be excellent for expansion, as there will be opportunities to enter new markets. There will be wider potential leads, customers and clients to generate greater profit. It also offers the chance to gain insight on niche markets and the competitors within them.
Asynchronous Work
While synchronous work allows employees to complete tasks together and at the same time, asynchronous can also bring benefits. It decouples remote workers from traditional office constraints like working set hours, which can improve their productivity and allow them to take over tasks while the overseas workers are inactive.
High-quality Talent Pool
If you’re hiring employees from different countries around the world, you are widening your search pool and have the potential to find higher quality professionals. This can be great if you are looking to grow in a specific country or dip your toe into several markets across the globe. You’ll gain different insights from the talent pool you find in each country.
Strategic HRM
Human resource management allows companies to plan for the future success of their business and this is enhanced when you are leveraging strategic HRM across borders. You can hire and train employees that you know will have a positive effect on your long-term goals.
Enhanced International Presence
Building brand awareness is key for any business, especially those who want to grow to a global market and expand. When you get an overseas workforce, you can increase customer engagement and effectively manage them to help get your brand in the eyes of more people in different countries.
Personal and Professional Growth
There’s more opportunities with the new cultures and countries that are involved with hiring international employees. Actively managing international employees effectively will increase the chances of personal and professional growth amongst them.
Increased Diversity
International employees allow higher levels of diversity, which can bring many benefits to the business. The more experiences and backgrounds allow different creative approaches that can help give them a competitive advantage. It also creates a better atmosphere among employees.
Cost-Effectiveness
Businesses that operate overseas will be more cost-effective than focusing solely on recruitment within the company’s home country. When it’s managed correctly, it can lead to less expenditure and better return on investment (ROI).
Disadvantages of International Employees
Complex Staff Training
The lack of in-person contact with overseas staff makes it more difficult to give them appropriate training, especially when it comes to more manual tasks. Clashing time zones is also a big factor, as you might not have any cross over periods to train them properly.
Labor and Tax Law Compliance
Expanding your business overseas means consistent compliance with global labor and tax laws is required. The manager of a global workforce needs to be able to cater for all regulatory requirements of each country.
Global Payroll Differences
Making your organization competitively appealing to talent from other nations necessitates a complex approach to global payroll and employee benefits packages. Workers in various countries will demand different benefits and to be paid competitively.
Coordination Issues
While asynchronous work has its benefits, it’s less popular than the synchronized approach. Since each country will be working specific times, it means that there could be a lack of cross overs. For example, the USA can be 8 hours behind UK time in some areas, which can make coordination difficult.
Language Barriers
Even though English is the most widely spoken language among businesses internationally, barriers may still exist which you must learn to overcome. Hiring employees who are multilingual can be a great solution for this, as they will know a variety of different languages.
Staff Relocation
You may want to relocate your Head of Sales to oversee the hiring of a new sales staff in East Asia. However, the cultural shock of this transfer may have a negative impact on the employee’s performance and, in some cases, retention. This makes good business relocation management crucial.
Workplace Community Challenges
Creating a strong sense of community inside the workplace is very important for boosting productivity and happiness. With international employees, it can be a challenge to create this as there’s no in-person interaction making it really hard to get to know them properly. This can reduce overseas employee retention rates.
How to Successfully Manage International Employees
Be Mindful of Cultural Differences
Every country will have different things that they expect from employment and unique cultural morals. If you’re managing international employees, you need to be increasingly aware and mindful of these so that every employee is catered to and they feel comfortable being employed by your business.
An example of a difference is that in the UK, if you are late by any amount of time to a meeting it is deemed to be unprofessional whereas in India, if you are less than 15 minutes late you are deemed to be on time.
All personnel of the business should receive cultural awareness and sensitivity training on a regular basis. Given that sensitive terminology evolves quickly and that your company’s expansion will frequently involve other cultures, staying current with cultural awareness training is critical to your success and potentially even their retention.
Create a Welcoming Space for All Religions
With different cultures comes a variety of religions. You can only receive the full potential of the talent pool available around the world if you create a welcoming space that will be accepting of every religion.
Some religions require time to practice their devotions during the working day, so you will need to be mindful of this and accept that they need this time. There’s other religious beliefs and practices that need consideration too, such as fasting during Ramadan as a lack of food and drink can have an effect on energy levels and concentration.
International employees are legally entitled to public holidays in their native country. While Christmas is a national holiday in majority-Christian countries like Mexico, the Lunar New Year is more prominent in China and Japan so will need to be considered by management.
Comply With Tax and Labor Laws
Following the tax and labor laws of the country in which you hire foreign employees is your responsibility, not the laws of the country where your headquarters is located. With so many different countries whose laws you have to follow, compliance quickly becomes a very complicated issue for multinational corporations.
By using a reliable Employer of Record, you can easily grow in compliance while avoiding the numerous possible penalties linked to non-compliance and employee misclassification.
The USA offers zero days of national statutory parental leave, whereas countries like Sweden offer up to 240 days so you’ll need to be mindful of this. Complying to the often extremely diverse and conflicting labor laws of different countries is part of the juggling act of managing a global workforce. Those with a British citizenship are eligible to take either one or two consecutive weeks off work to care for a new child.
Provide EAL Support
It is the number one spoken language in the entire world concerning business relations and thus we are compelled to conclude that English is a mandatory language to speak and comprehend in the work place. Most companies that are not English speaking will tend to require their workforce to speak the language.
In the case of dealing with international employees, which may not be fully versed in English, make them feel as being on a level pegging by availing English as an additional language (EAL) service to those employees who may need such services to ensure they work alongside their international counterparts.
However, having a workforce who speak a variety of different languages will have the most benefits as you can get messages across the world much easier.
Effective Training Protocols
Some of the effective training guidelines in managing international employees involve cultural awareness training, language training, technical expertise training and continual assistance.
The protocols ought to deal not only with aspects of working in a new environment such as logistics, but also the cultural aspects of working in a new environment. This further enhances concentration in proper communication and relationship to develop a better bond with the team because they all feel involved.
The transition to new duties and environments can also be facilitated by continuous assistance in form of coaching, mentorship and regular feedbacks which can help the employees settle in their new jobs in case most of the employees are stationed abroad.
Capitalize on Time Zone Differences
It is necessary to learn about the constraints that time zones may have when one wants to conduct synchronous work globally when expanding your company. It is important though to acknowledge that there are a lot of advantages of working asynchronously thus allowing you to exploit them. Some of them include:
- Work can be carried out during both the day and night.
- Effective 24/7 real-time interaction with customers through customer service, social media, etc.
- More flexible communication that’s not limited to regular business hours.
- Improved documentation and knowledge sharing
Taking the insights of strategic benefits of asynchronous collaboration on board, the businesses can be able to turn the time zone differences into a strong capability that can inculcate them into more efficient and innovating experiences that will make them far more productive.
Leverage Digital Tools
Real-time communication is made possible by applications such as Slack, Microsoft Teams and Zoom and this has simplified communication and collaboration amongst workmates who are in various parts of the world. You can also implement the use of Asana and Trello for improved time tracking and task management. This enhanced organization can help international employees work together more seamlessly.
Cloud-based solutions like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 enable seamless document sharing and real-time collaboration on the same document, at the same time. So, if you want a place where everyone can track and look at work from their peers while being across borders, it can now be done with ease.
EoR and Global Business Solutions
When managing international employees, engage an Employer of Record (EOR) and Global Business Solutions provider to enhance with global expansion. An EOR will be the legal employer of your global employees, whom they will take care of payroll, taxation, benefits and compliance, so that you do not have to create local structures. This makes internationalization easy and it also complies with the local labor legislations as well.
Conclusion
Managing international employees is associated with particular challenges, it creates opportunities to promote company growth and innovativeness. The advantages are clear-cut starting with acquiring new markets and reaching diverse talent pools through to prompting professional and personal growth in the members of your team.
As businesses recognize the diversity of cultures, different legal frameworks and time zones, they are likely to achieve a competitive advantage that will enable simplification of their businesses and collaborate perfectly.
The insights from this guide will hopefully inspire you to do more than just managing international employees. You are building a dynamic global ecosystem where diverse perspectives foster innovation and drive growth. You need to create an international enterprise designed to lead the future generations of international employees.
