India leads in global remote hiring for international workers in the Asia/Pacific region

Indian companies are leading the pack in hiring international workers to work remotely as they look to transition towards a more efficient way of working, which includes a combination of working from office and remotely, a survey report from the workforce management firm Remote has revealed. 

The report -- titled Bridging the Talent Gap: The Future of Hiring in the Asia/Pacific Region' -- shows the growing trend of remote hiring and distributed workforce strategies in India, New Zealand, Australia, and Singapore.

The report also showed that three years since the global remote work revolution began, Asia-Pacific-based companies have come beyond temporary work-from-home arrangements to embracing permanently distributed teams spread across multiple locations, hereby widening their talent pool, improving cultural diversity and productivity, and expanding globally. 

According to the report, about 50 per cent of small and medium businesses (SMBs), along with mid-market companies in India, plan to hire 40 to 60 per cent of full-time employees or contractors in the next 12 months. In contrast, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore are planning to hire only 20 to 30 per cent of remote full-time employees or contractors.

India has the highest employer of record adoption at 70.5 per cent, followed by Singapore with 64.0 per cent, as Indian companies are looking increasingly to globalise their businesses while reducing workforce costs. 

Employer of record is a third-party service that helps companies employ and pay international employees living in countries where they do not have a legal entity and manage the complexities of local compliance, payroll, benefits, taxes, and more. 

As more SMBs and mid-market businesses hire employees to work remotely from various locations, they use employer of record solutions to simplify the complexities of payroll, tax, and compliance, the report revealed.

Interestingly, the report pointed out that compared to other developed countries, India is least mature when it comes to 'hiring maturity', which means that they lack when it comes to hiring employees remotely from around the world using their internal processes, hence, they go ahead with the employer of record solutions. 

However, SMBs and mid-market companies in New Zealand are the most mature, integrating technology into their HR processes, enabling their internal teams to hire and retain workers from geographies where they do not have a presence.

Companies involved in the survey stated that cost-effective workforce options are the top business priority, and finding the right mix of skills is a crucial challenge in hiring internationally.

Job van der Voort, CEO and co-founder of Remote, said, “The pandemic has fundamentally changed the way businesses operate, and we are seeing that companies in the Asia/Pacific region have been among the fastest in the world to adapt their hiring and workforce strategies for the current era. As remote work continues to gain traction, companies that are able to tap into the international talent pool will have a significant advantage over those that do not.”

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