4 Reasons Why Having an On-the-ground CSM is Crucial for Your EOR Experience

When choosing an EOR partner for hiring abroad and building a global team, you’ll want to select a provider that goes above and beyond basic payroll and benefits. 

Whether you’re the CEO, COO, or Head of People at a small startup, or an HR leader at a medium or large company, having an on-the-ground customer support manager who can offer strategic advice and answer pressing questions is crucial. 

Here are our top four reasons why having an on-the-ground customer support manager (CSM) is essential for building and scaling your international hubs.

1. A point person who is always available

Your customer support manager is always available on email, Slack, or your preferred communication channel to answer questions or offer support. By having one point of contact, you ensure that you get answers to your legal, accounting, benefits, and other HR-related questions without chasing after answers from different departments. 

2. Your CSM is supportive across the entire employee lifecycle

Personalized onboarding

Onboarding can be a challenging process. With a hyperlocal EOR, your workers receive much more than just software.

Your customer support manager is there to walk your workers through the self onboarding on the platform, signing employment contracts, and filling out important paperwork that requires personal information (like social security and bank account numbers.)

Registering for benefits in some countries, including Colombia and Mexico, requires extensive paperwork, forms about an employee’s health, letters from a physician, and a phone call with the local vendor. You can be sure that your customer support manager will be there to support your team every step of the way. 

Hands-on offboarding 

In the US, offboarding workers is slightly more straightforward, since there are few or no severance requirements.

Across Latin America and Europe, however, offboarding is much more complicated. In most circumstances, employers will need to pay severance to workers that are fired with reason (justified), fired without reason (not justified), or laid off. 

When you need to offboard a worker, your CSM should immediately connect with local payroll experts and ensure that you get the exact calculation for the minimum amount of severance required to remain compliant. 

Your CSM can ensure that your terminated workers are paid compliantly, with no delays.  

Support for ongoing payroll questions

Navigating payroll is challenging, no matter the country. Your customer support manager is there to support you when something needs to be modified, such as adding holiday or overtime pay, managing reimbursements, navigating paid and unpaid leave, and more. 

Employment verification support

A hyperlocal EOR partner is also there to stand in as the official employer when your workers need employment verification. This is often required when your worker is signing a lease for an apartment or getting a mortgage for a home. 

3. Receive hands-on support with other local HR processes 

In a traditional corporate environment, HR is responsible for handling tasks outside of payroll. For businesses that partner with Justworks, the customer support manager can step in and assist with HR functions outside of payroll, offboarding, and onboarding as well. 

4. You will have a strategic partner and consultant as you expand globally.

Your customer support manager can help you find the best approach to structure and scale your team, as well as begin strategizing your expansion to other countries. 

Recruiting with local partners

Hiring one or two workers in a new country can be exciting, but the real value of building a hub abroad comes from learning a new market, building a recruiter brand across borders, and tapping into a local talent pool. 

However, recruiting in a new country for the first time can be challenging. Rather than start with the same job boards that other businesses are using, your customer support manager can put you in touch with local recruiters, making it fast and easy to build and scale your team. 

Not only is this good for your business. It’s also a huge opportunity for your remote hub to begin developing their own unique office culture. Even remote workers in new hubs find it beneficial to meet up with local colleagues in co-working spaces and other office settings.

Structuring your team

A hyperlocal EOR partner like Justworks makes hiring workers from top to bottom seamless. You can onboard full-time employees at every level, including executives, supervisors, coordinators, knowledge workers, and front-line workers. 

As part of the hyperlocal EOR experience, your customer support manager can consult on a number of company growth initiatives. The can answer common questions such as:

• What is the ideal profile for an HR manager in the new country?

• What are the salary benchmarks for a software engineer?

• What benefits do I need to offer a senior hire?

While some employers manage HR fully from the HQ abroad, businesses planning to scale might consider hiring an on-the-ground HR manager in the new country. Whichever path you choose, your customer support manager is there to offer guidance along the way.

Expanding to new markets 

Many companies begin working with an EOR because they are hiring in one country for the first time, but are curious to start building a team in another country. 

Maybe you have a team in Mexico and want to double down on Latin America by expanding to Colombia. Perhaps you have employees in Canada, but need to expand your team’s geographic reach to include Europe, so you decide to hire in Portugal. 

No matter what approach you decide to take, your customer support manager can provide guidance for how to expand and structure your new hubs abroad. 

Interested in learning more about Justworks’ EOR services?

Get started today.