Bringing on new employees always comes with challenges, and introducing international staff can add extra complexity. A well-crafted global employment program can help address some of the common challenges faced by new hires from around the world.
What does a comprehensive global employment package include? Similar to a standard employment package, it encompasses basic policies, agreements, and training materials to facilitate the new employee-employer relationship. The uniqueness of global employment programs lies in their adaptability, making them applicable to employees from various countries, not just those where your company is based.
1.Creating a Global Employment Onboarding Checklist
Prepare All Relevant HR Forms
Your new employees may need to complete multiple HR forms to meet compliance requirements, depending on their workplace location. Ensure you have the necessary tax forms ready, along with any payment forms, confidentiality and non-compete agreements, or other contracts you wish to have in place.
Develop Benefit Plans
Offering benefits on a global scale can be quite challenging. Keep in mind the specific benefit requirements of different countries/regions, and decide between standardizing benefits and localizing them. If you encounter difficulties in constructing a global benefits package, you can always seek help from global employment platforms.
Create a Welcome Kit
The welcome kit you provide for new employees should offer more information about the company, including contact names, phone numbers, and email addresses. It should also include an overview of the company structure and mission statement.
Give your kit a personalized touch to make your new employees genuinely excited to receive it. Add branded items like T-shirts or coffee mugs, notebooks and pen sets, and logo stickers to make the kit feel more like a gift and showcase your company’s personality.
A welcome letter from recruiters and the new employee’s manager is also a thoughtful and useful reminder of who they will be interacting with on their first day.
Set Up Digital Access
As remote workers, your global new employees will rely entirely on technology to perform their work and interact with other staff members. It’s essential to ensure they have all the computer, software, and account access they will need to do so. Provide the correct login credentials, add them to any email or other communication groups, and include them in your scheduling software to keep them up to date.
Organize Training Materials
In addition to the welcome kit, your new employees will need some extra resources to help them get the job done and achieve their goals. Providing training materials in various formats—such as videos, written instructions, and illustrated guides—can help all your employees understand these materials.
Design an Orientation Process
Onboarding training refers to when your new employees start to feel more comfortable with their roles at your company. This process is particularly important for global and remote employees, as they might not have face-to-face interactions with the company and colleagues. Plan to schedule video meetings between new employees and their supervisors to introduce them to rules, goals, and responsibilities.
Assign a Mentor
The Harvard Business Review reports that having a “buddy” during the first 90 days significantly increases new hires’ job performance in their new positions. Even after 90 days, having a mentor is a great way to allow your new employees to learn important skills from your organization’s seasoned staff. It will also deepen the connection between your global employees and your company, which is a key goal when working with cross-border workers.
Develop a Re-Check-In Plan
Most people assume that onboarding ends after the first few days or weeks in a new position. While this is essentially true, it’s also a good idea to ensure new hires are adapting and reaching their developmental benchmarks in the first year of their employment. A 3/6/9 check-in plan, where someone checks in every 3 months during the employee’s first year, is a good guideline.
This is by no means an exhaustive list to be your global employment onboarding checklist, but it should be enough to get you started.
2.Global Employment Solutions
Even with the help of a global employment onboarding checklist, if introducing international talent still sounds overly complicated, don’t worry. There are several different global employment solutions for your business to choose from.
One solution is to use a global employment platform. This cloud-based software helps onboard global employees, provide them with benefits, and manage payroll and tax compliance. In other words, your global employment platform will offer additional support to ensure your company can seamlessly collaborate with employees from all over the world.
However, don’t settle for any platform. Your company should look for the best global employment platform tailored to your needs. It must cover compliance, reliability, and speed, and have full global access.
