It’s a common issue for any business expanding globally; how to bring people into the company, while navigating multi-national employment systems.

This was the case for Carl Hartmann and Mark Livings, co-founders of non-alcoholic beverage supplier Lyre’s Spirits Co.

The pair formed the company in 2019 and since then the company has expanded into numerous countries within a short period.

Lyre Spirits currently sells in over 60 countries and has production facilities across Europe, Asia and Australia.

With business entities in the UK, USA and China where they have a major presence, Hartmann found employing global staff was often a costly and time-consuming exercise.

Bank accounts, understanding employment legislations, and local payroll had to be established.

In some cases, the set up process took more than six months.

“When we looked at employing smaller numbers say, one or two employees in a country, the costs and the pain of setting up bank accounts, legislation, the amount of paperwork, audits, as well as keeping it running, just didn’t make sense,” says Hartmann.

Then Hartmann discovered an online platform and says it was a lifesaver.

“We were expanding and going down the manual path of finding people. The biggest issue was if we found a great hire and then lost them due to the not having the right paperwork and foundation.

“We found the Deel platform and we’re able to enter markets quickly, cheaply and painlessly. This was very important.”

What’s the Deel?

Deel was co-founded in 2018 by MIT graduates Alex Bouaziz and Shuo Wang.

The pair formed the company through their own frustrations of trying to hire people overseas while they both worked for a start-up.

Similar to Hartmann, their challenges were mainly around navigating international labour laws, tax structures overseas and payment systems for different countries.

The Deel platform allows companies to hire people from around the world, even in countries where an employer does not have a company entity set up.

Shannon Karaka, Head of Expansion ANZ at Deel said, the platform is set up to support hiring contractors across 150 countries. The service has expanded out supporting full time employees.

“Through our platform you can hire contractors and employees. It’s a seamless system, and it only takes ten minutes to create a contract,” he said.

“When employing someone overseas, the employer has to consider labour laws, tax implications or the costly need of setting up business entity. Deel has solved the hiring process.”

Importantly, incorporating overseas is a costly factor for any business, costing anywhere between $30K to $50K to set up.

“Historically, when a company wants to offer full-time employment in other countries, it’s usually done by incorporating a company or by leveraging an outsourcing company.

“What Deel does is disrupts this space. We manage all the compliance and payroll, specific to each country,” said Karaka.

He said the trend to work anywhere in the world continues to evolve and is now becoming the norm.

And retention is top of mind for employers.

“More and more organisations are struggling with retention – the labour market is in short supply and because of this, employees have the power to dictate terms.

“Employers have to be flexible and fluid in their offerings,” he said.

“If an employer wants to implement a ‘work from anywhere’ policy, the only way to execute this is if you have entities in every country.

“We have these around the globe which help companies keep staff.”

To date, Lyre Liquor has used the platform in around ten countries.

Hartmann says the opportunity to explore a broader pool of talent has been an added benefit to bringing in staff.

“When looking for roles, we’ve got access to a broader reach of international markets without any emphasis on one market.

“We’ll look across half a dozen countries to find the right person, no matter where they are.

“This takes away anxiety knowing that we don’t have to set up an entity and it’s only a few clicks away, that’s powerful.”

Hartmann believes there will be a recalibration in terms of what companies are prepared to pay for roles.

“The current economic and inflation pressures mean it’s not always sustainable to hire certain roles in countries where wages are high.

“Having access to a wider circle of people across the globe can bring in high quality employees without high costs.”