In the recent past, companies both large and small, have been looking to outsource some aspect of their business or expand their markets into new territories. Most often, the companies are lured by the idea of cheap labour, cheap raw materials, a better business environment, less restrictive policies etc. However, outsourcing your business or moving into a new market can be quite challenging in the early days. Without the requisite experience you will run into quite a few roadblocks along the way.
Human Resource
Management of the human resource in a new country is one of the greatest challenges you will face. If you’re making a product, the system/process you employ to create it isn’t likely to change. However, in a new country, you could find different policies with regards to:
Payroll processing: Processing of employees’ salaries has to be done in time and with various considerations pertaining to deductions and the like. Employees will also need to be able to get their payslips.
Recruitment, firing and other aspects of HR management: In certain countries, there are factors that must be taken into consideration when hiring employees such as pro-gender equality laws. There may also be rules with regards to letting go an employee. Employees may also need to take certain days off and the processing of their requests may need to be done quite quickly.
Benefits
Risk management: Different countries approach matters to do with employee safety, compensation etc. differently
Compliance
Unless your specialty is in the HR field, navigating the minefield ahead will not be easy. While outsourcing to some countries may be quite straightforward, compliance may be compulsory in others. For example, in some countries, employees have to be registered with the tax agency before they can even start working for you. Flaunting of this rule could cost the company a lot. The manner in which taxes are to be filed in these countries is also likely to be different.
In such a case, compliance won’t be a challenge simply due to the number of things that have to be done. Even knowing all that needs to be done for you to be in compliance with tax laws and labour laws can be overwhelming.
Two Alternatives
Doing your own Research
This is the cheaper of the two alternatives but it will require that you spend a lot of man hours looking into the specifics of HR in a given country. With so many governments digitizing their systems, you can find a lot of the information you need on the internet. The problem you may face is that some aspects of the process may have been overlooked during the digitizing process. This means you may not realize that you’re not in compliance. If the websites you need to access are in a foreign language, you’ll also find it tough.
Hire a Human Resource Outsource Company
This will call for you to spend some money but the returns will be a much simpler solution on your part and one that you’re more or less guaranteed will work. Companies such as SafeGuard World International specialize in helping countries looking to move into new areas to handle the HR management tasks with ease. The advantage of such companies is that you’ll get the benefit of their experiences in these countries.
