Welcome to RemoLabs! This research series shares insights from anonymized customer data from RemoFirst's Employer of Record platform, plus surveys and third-party market research. We then share our findings to help you hire smarter and navigate global expansion.
As global hiring becomes more common, most hiring managers have reached the same conclusion: managing employment law and compliance isn't something to only handle internally.
In a RemoLabs survey of 300 companies hiring internationally, two-thirds (65%) said they depend on a global employment partner to oversee these functions, and another 28% use a hybrid model that pairs external expertise with their in-house HR or legal support.
Combined, that is more than 90% of companies partnering with an expert in some capacity, leaving just 7% managing it fully in-house.
Understanding the Law and Keeping Up With It Are Two Different Jobs
Most in-house legal and HR leaders already understand employment law. The challenge isn't expertise; it's capacity.
Tax brackets, minimum wage floors, statutory leave, and termination notice periods change in most countries multiple times a year, and rarely on a predictable schedule.
A legal team can learn Brazil's labor code. But keeping up with every amendment — while also doing so simultaneously for Germany, India, and a dozen other markets, and managing quarter-end payroll — is a different scope of work entirely.
That distinction explains why even well-resourced teams choose to offload some of this work rather than absorb it entirely.
Why Size Changes the Reasoning, Not the Decision
Startups, for example, lean on partners because speed matters more than infrastructure. A 10-person company hiring its first employee in Portugal has no reason to set up a local entity, payroll, and benefits administration for one hire.
A global employment partner lets companies make that hire in days instead of months, without taking on the infrastructure and administrative burden.
Larger companies with established HR, legal, and finance functions choose global hiring partners for a different reason. They may have the expertise, but not the local resources to move as quickly as hiring demands.
Registering a local entity, building relationships with in-country benefits and insurance providers, and running compliant payroll in a new market takes months, not days — even with a well-resourced legal team.
And the exposure from getting it wrong does not shrink with company size. A single misclassified worker or missed statutory contribution in one country carries the same fine and legal risk whether the company has 50 employees or 5,000.
That helps explain why 28% of companies take a hybrid approach to global HR, keeping strategic HR and legal decisions in-house while relying on a partner for local execution and ongoing monitoring.
A global employment partner can also help large organizations test new talent markets or explore global expansion without making a major upfront commitment. Companies can hire in a new country faster and with less investment before deciding whether to establish a more permanent presence.
The Real Return on a Global Employment Partner
The ROI of a global employment partner is often measured in cost savings and reduced compliance risk. But some of the biggest returns come from speed and focus.
Every week spent sorting out entity setup or local payroll is a week when a candidate could accept another offer.
A global employment partner helps keep hiring on schedule by taking entity setup out of the equation and handling local contracts, payroll, and benefits from day one. That also frees internal HR and legal teams from managing compliance country by country, so they can focus on retention, org design, and other strategic work that requires their expertise — rather than climbing a mountain of paperwork.
Based on RemoLabs survey data on how companies manage employment law and compliance when hiring abroad.
RemoLabs Tip
Working with a global Employer of Record like RemoFirst makes it easier to hire employees across borders. RemoFirst handles local employment contracts, payroll, benefits, and compliance, helping companies hire faster while reducing the workload for internal HR and legal teams.
About This Data
Our data is anonymized, drawn from customer insights and trends, and gathered through surveys of hundreds of HR and People Ops leaders globally. While this does not include millions of data points, it's collected from thousands of companies globally that are open to, and already hiring, talent in countries around the world.
