Cross-border hiring goes beyond remote work because it prioritizes hiring experts abroad in order to save time, cut costs, and create a more diverse company culture.
According to a Global Data Alliance study, at least 41% of jobs in the United States can be done completely remotely. Before the pandemic, only 5% to 15% of people doing these jobs were working from home or as digital nomads, but now that number has skyrocketed to nearly 50%.
These statistics show that remote work is starting to overtake in-person work as the norm, and yet, companies still have a ways to go before they can really start making the most of the advantages of it. Embracing a cross-border hiring policy is one of the best ways to take advantage of remote work.
Let’s talk more about some of the benefits of hiring from the international talent pool:
1.- Cost reduction
Cities and countries with the highest concentration of tech and service companies also tend to have higher costs of living. As a result, companies need to pay local employees much higher salaries, not to mention astronomical costs of talent searches and recruiting.
Two neighboring regions with a stark contrast in terms of cost of living are the United States and Canada vs. Latin America. Compared to American cities, the cost of living is 50% to 75% lower for any employee living in a city in Mexico, Brazil, or Argentina.
Therefore, companies can pay Latin American team members competitive and fair rates while saving money.
2.- Access to diverse international hiring
Diversity is proven to be a vital asset for productivity and company innovation. According to studies conducted by McKinsey Research, People Management, and Forbes, to mention just a few, companies with more internationally diverse teams are:
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- 35% more obtain a higher ROI than their industry competitors
- 87% better at making decisions and finding out-of-the-box solutions, and
- Increase annual revenue from innovation by up to 19%
What does diversity have to do with productivity? Well, hiring team members from different backgrounds broadens the number of ideas and perspectives that are contributed, fosters creativity, strengthens a culture of respect, and boosts healthy competition that drives positive results across the board.
3.- Hiring agility
For companies located in areas with a high concentration of industry competitors, the time that it takes to hire someone can double or even triple because of the talent shortage, especially when it comes to tech and programming.
Casting a wider net into the international talent pool allows you to fill critical roles in record time with candidates that are highly qualified. As a result, you can prevent projects from getting delayed or impacting productivity across the board due to a lack of staff.
4.- Broadening the time zone and quality of assistance
Hiring Latin American team members allows you to cover six full time zones to attend to your domestic and international clients’ needs, and in multiple languages to boot.
In fact, a Harvard Business Review showed that when at least one team member shared the same cultural background as a customer, it increased a customer’s sense of feeling like their needs were being understood by 152%.
5.- New market exploration
Companies that grew internationally reported that their main difficulties involved navigating cultural differences and language barriers that change radically from one country to another.
If you have reliable team members who work in other parts of the world, you already have strategic personnel that’s ready to help you find the best business opportunities and adapt to a prospective market’s expectations when it’s time to expand your company to another market.
6.- Better work environment and higher employee satisfaction
When you hire someone who lives abroad or is a digital nomad, generally they aren’t thinking that you’re hiring them to cut costs or making the hiring process more agile. They think that you value what they bring to the table and trust their work, so much so that distance isn’t an issue.
This increases the sense of wellbeing at work and company loyalty. Not to mention, a multicultural team helps improve employee branding.
7.- The positive impact of corporate responsibility
There are a lot of implicit ways that cross-border hiring can make a company more socially responsible. First of all, there are the mental health benefits associated with remote work and a decreased carbon footprint, But that’s not all. Remote work also contributes to decreasing or even stopping gentrification in big cities, it stimulates economies in developing countries, and it guarantees that your team will be even more resilient in the face of emergency situations and future crises.
How can I start making the most of all the benefits of cross-border hiring?
Some of the challenges that prevented you from employing cross-border hiring in the past probably had to do with not knowing where to look for candidates or how to verify a candidate’s technical skills, or not being familiar with hiring laws in other countries.
We understand that these components can be pretty daunting at first. That’s why Workana is here to help you create your dream team of developers and IT talent in Latin America with a flexible and secure hiring system, 100% bilingual talent that’s carefully selected by our experts, and our unique seven-day, risk-free trial period with each candidate.
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