Video: 10 Minute IT Jams - Who is Globalization Partners?

It can take just hours to bring new staff on board, not weeks or months. That is the bold promise of Globalization Partners, a company aiming to reshape how businesses hire and pay employees around the globe.

Charlie Ferguson, Asia Pacific General Manager, explained the company's origins and the rapid changes driving its growth in an interview for 10 Minute IT Jams.

"Absolutely, the company itself was founded in 2012 in the United States," Ferguson said, noting that it operates dual headquarters in San Diego and Boston. Now present in 187 countries, the firm supports companies to employ local talent without the headache of setting up legal entities in each new market.

At the heart of Globalization Partners' offering is the Employer of Record (EOR) model, powered by proprietary technology. "The company finds the talent, the candidate, and we kind of take care of the rest of the process," Ferguson explained. "We onboard the candidate, we use our own entities and technology and structures around the world to get them on board in a few hours in most cases." This operator model also ensures employees are paid compliantly, tax filings are handled according to local laws, and all jurisdiction-specific employment rules are carefully followed.

Ferguson traced the company's growth to founder Nicole Sahin's frustration with the time and complexity involved in typical international expansion. Rather than laboriously setting up new offices and payroll in each country, Sahin envisaged a single structure that could deliver staffing, payroll, and compliance as a rapid, all-in-one solution wherever talent was needed. "Her idea was, how wonderful would it be if I were able to go around the world and set up a structure that any company that wanted to come into a particular country could leverage in order to hire and onboard their staff?" Ferguson said.

The model, while seemingly simple, has been growing in significance against a complex global backdrop. "There are so many areas that are growing right now, not least of which exacerbated by some of the trade contests between superpowers - the United States and China being chief among them - but also by virtue of the fact that during this Covid pandemic, so many shifts in the perspective of how to deliver business value have occurred," Ferguson explained.

One key trend is the reconsideration and relocation of supply chains in response to global disruption. As companies look to make their operations more resilient, they are seeking ways to enter new markets quickly - often without the ability to physically send staff due to travel restrictions. "So we provide this vehicle that allows for a particular company to do some exploring, you know, explore a market in a very low risk manner," he said. Firms can "hire an individual or a few people, build a small team and go out and really start to build the links in that supply chain in the local market," before making larger bets on local infrastructure.

Governments are also taking note, hoping to elevate their national talent pools and encourage inbound investment. "I talk to a lot of government agencies around this region who are particularly keen to elevate their national talent pool capability ... There are companies all around the world right now who are eager to tap into the global talent pool," Ferguson said. He added that this trend has only accelerated with the shift to remote work - "the whole world becomes your recruitment pool," he observed.

But remote hiring presents its own challenges. "If I for example wanted to hire someone that I discovered through social channels and vetted etc and that person was in New Zealand as an example, if I don't have a presence there, it's extremely difficult for me to compliantly hire and onboard that particular, uh, talented professional without structure in place," he said. The EOR model fills that gap, allowing employers to "acquire and retain that talent" without setting up a new company - and with the ability to transition those staff later if permanent offices are established.

The technology underpinning the platform acts as "a command centre for remote work management," Ferguson said. "It allows you to administer various aspects of payroll, it allows for the professionals themselves to get clarity around areas of payroll they have interest in understanding and or perhaps more germane is to do expense claims and things they should like, day-to-day sort of interaction." Users can request paid time off, manage expenses, or even explore new markets through an online dashboard, which Ferguson described as "consumer-grade", "seamless", and "in line with not only what technology should be providing from an ease of use perspective, but it's also aligned very closely to the world that we're operating in now, which is basically everything's got to be kind of seamless and automated in order for it to work in a remote construct."

So who is using these services in the Asia Pacific region? Ferguson said technology firms are the biggest customers - "they're typically the ones who are exploring new markets very rapidly and need a very quick time to value." Yet a wide range of sectors use the company, from manufacturing to fast-moving consumer goods and online services.

Importantly, client size is not the main driver. "Companies that are on the smaller end of the spectrum, you know, small-medium enterprises for lack of a better term, are very common, we deal with those types of companies all the time, startups at Series B, C etc who are looking to test theories on different markets," he added. Large, established businesses use the service when entering unfamiliar countries, while private equity and venture capital funds increasingly rely on it to rationalise and preserve portfolios as they shift legal structures internationally.

This transition is invisible to the employees involved. "The important part of that is that the experience of the employee is never really impacted, right? It's all done behind the scenes so they continue to be well looked after," Ferguson said.

Asked how prospective partners or customers can reach the company, Ferguson replied, "We have a million different ways to reach out to us, as is always the case in these modern times." He described a free online resource called Globalpedia, designed to inform companies considering global expansion. The website resource, he noted, is spelled with a 'z', reflecting the firm's US roots.

Ending the discussion, Ferguson reflected on the pace and scale of change: "The world that we're operating in now? Everything's got to be kind of seamless and automated in order for it to work in a remote construct," he said.