If hiring abroad intimidates you because of the many challenges it presents, keep reading to learn how to gain access to skilled workers in other countries.
The obvious challenges are global immigration and taxes. But other factors to consider include different time zones, cultural differences, language barriers and training schedules.
Here’s how to navigate these complexities to start hiring the best employees regardless of their nation of origin.
Overcome the Challenges of Hiring Employees from Abroad
As you consider hiring employees from abroad, you need to be open to new ideas to access a larger talent pool. You’ll still face challenges, but you’ll have the tools to overcome them. Here’s a closer look at common challenges and solutions.
Visa and Immigration
Hiring employees internationally involves ensuring they get their work visa or complete their immigration process in time. Changing visa and immigration policies can further complicate having workers from abroad. And businesses often can’t foresee those changes and adapt quickly to protect their workforce and ensure compliance.
If your country is one that limits the number of foreign workers you can hire, that further complicates the process and maintaining proper ratios between foreign and local candidates presents unique challenges.
To overcome these challenges, use these tips.
- Start by learning your regulations: Review your country’s policies surrounding foreign workers. Know the process to getting a visa and how to immigrate to your country.
- Work with your attorney: Talk to your company’s attorney about best practices for reaching candidates abroad and bringing them onto your team. Ensure compliance with all regulations by getting legal review before recruiting or hiring foreign workers.
- Evaluate remote work: For some positions, remote work can reduce the visa challenges and risks associated with foreign team members. Review the job requirements to see if remote work might be realistic for the position.
- Offer relocation assistance: The cost of relocating can be a major deterrent for foreign applicants. If you want the best talent pool possible, offer relocation assistance to remove barriers for your employees and help them get established in their new country.
Communication Barriers
Depending on your native language and that of your hiring pool, communication can be complex. Time zone differences and acclimating new staff to your communication tools can further complicate the process.
Looking to hire employees from abroad?
Remove communication barriers by following these tips.
- Set clear language proficiency requirements: Talk to your recruiting agency about the language proficiency requirements to ensure your new employee is prepared to join your team.
- Promote open communication: The more often you communicate with your staff, the better. Set clear expectations. And if you’re hiring employees from abroad, provide them with easy communication channels to reach you.
- Share communication expectations: Various companies have differing cultural norms for communicating. Tell your foreign employees how often you expect to hear from them and what information you want them to share.
- Use simple language: When communicating, be clear and straightforward. Avoid colloquialisms and other language that might not make sense to someone new to the team.
Cultural Differences
As you look to hire from other countries, you’ll encounter cultural differences. For the smoothest integration of new team members, you should prepare your team for what to expect when welcoming your foreign employees.
Some ideal ways to avoid issues with cultural differences is to follow these tips.
- Include cultural training: By providing such training, you’ll prepare your new employee for the culture they’ll be taking part in. And you can share cultural concepts from other countries you hire from to prepare existing employees for how to collaborate with your new staff. Some topics to include are professional etiquette, cultural customs and communication standards.
- Outline your diversity and inclusion policy: To avoid insensitive comments and a lack of care for foreign employees, consider outlining your diversity and inclusion policy. Be clear about your expectations for how employees should interact with one another regardless of their cultural differences.
Time Zones
When allowing for remote work from another country, you’ll likely face time zone challenges unless you’re clear about when you expect the employee to work. Some companies require that foreign employees follow the work schedule for the area where the business is domiciled. That’s the easiest way to avoid time zone issues.
But lack of flexibility in working times can reduce the quality of your recruiting pool as working odd hours might not be attractive to top talent. Or the employee might accept the working hours but then face burnout and fatigue from following the schedule.
Evaluate these options for overcoming time zone challenges.
- Use scheduling apps: Allow the worker to set their calendar in local time while employees in other countries view their meeting availability in their local time. When EU companies hire from Moldova, there is only a few hours time difference, meaning you will have good overlap between working hours.
- Set expectations: If you’re requiring foreign applicants to work hours based on your company’s time zone, be clear during the recruiting process.
- Offer flexibility where you can: The more flexible your policies are, the better talent you’ll attract.
- Share feedback often: Monitoring foreign employees is more complex, especially if they work different hours than their managers. Schedule regular performance discussions based on work output and not work hours.
Training
International employees might require additional training and a more thorough orientation as they might have limited knowledge of how things are done in your area. They’ll also have more of an adjustment time than those you hire from your area. But you have many options for preparing for this challenge.
- Build an orientation plan: You’ll find this beneficial even when you’re hiring local employees. Include information about your company, its culture, policies and more.
- Reduce language barriers: Pair your international employees with others on your team who speak multiple languages to aid in reducing the language barrier. That way, they can freely ask questions in their native language and prepare for their new role.
- Create a mentorship program: Acclimating new employees is easier when you have a mentorship program. This is true for all employees, not just international employees.
Regulatory
Understanding regulations around pay, labor and other legalities can be time-consuming. But once you devote resources to learning more about hiring in other regions, you’ll expand your talent pool. You don’t want to have to pay fines due to noncompliance.
There’s no secret to getting past this challenge. You simply need to hire expert counsel and learn various regulations and requirements before hiring abroad.
Tips for Working with Abroad Hiring Agencies
Working with abroad hiring agencies is the easiest way to recruit talent in other countries. The Association of Recruiting Agencies (ARA) is the best way to get access to the various specialties and talent acquisition experts you need.
Plus, you won’t have to worry about the legal compliance aspects of hiring foreign workers. ARA takes care of that for you. Plus, you can lease a worker and ARA will oversee recruiting and transporting the worker to your location.
Need an employer of record? ARA can do that too so you can simplify hiring and managing Moldovan workers.
Experience the talent waiting right outside your country’s borders. Get in touch to learn more about how ARA can provide you access to the talent that can transform your business.
Looking to hire employees from Moldova?
Related articles:
