Small and midsized businesses (SMBs) have long faced significant barriers to hiring internationally, from complex compliance requirements to the lack of a legal entity in foreign countries. A new partnership between isolved, a leading human capital management provider, and Remote, a global employment platform, aims to dismantle those barriers. The collaboration was detailed in a recent episode of 'You Should Know,' a podcast hosted by William Tincup of WRKdefined, featuring Barry Gauch, Executive Vice President at isolved, and Pim Altena, GM for Remote Embedded and VP of Partnerships at Remote.
The alliance addresses a growing demand among SMBs for cross-border hiring. Gauch explained that isolved's customer demand for global hiring had picked up, and rather than building a solution internally, the company chose to partner with Remote because "it's not our key competency, but we know we needed to deliver it." After a formal RFP process that narrowed ten providers to five, isolved selected Remote for its API-first model and ability to integrate seamlessly.
Remote offers three hiring modalities within a single platform: Employer of Record (EOR) for fast market entry, contractor management for flexible engagements, and global payroll for established international teams. This allows SMBs to hire talent from virtually anywhere without setting up their own legal entities. Altena highlighted the importance of hiring based on skills rather than geography, noting that companies often unknowingly constrain themselves by their compliance capabilities and legal entity footprint. He recalled his own experience as a Remote customer trying to hire an Italian candidate he could not legally employ, emphasizing that "you're hiring people for skills, right? Like, that's what you should do, but you're actually constraining yourself often unconsciously."
The operational reality of global employment is complex. Tincup noted that the State Department recognizes 192 countries with which U.S. companies can do business, each with its own federal, state, and municipal payroll rules. Altena pointed to extreme divergences in labor law, such as pre-employment medical exams being mandatory in some jurisdictions and forbidden in others, and highlighted the high employee-protection regimes in France and Germany. Gauch emphasized that affordability and white-glove customer treatment were non-negotiable criteria for isolved. He also previewed how the integration with ApplicantPro, now fully folded into isolved, will excite talent acquisition teams and staffing-company resellers looking for a unified platform.
The partnership's timing is critical as skill-based hiring accelerates. By removing legal, payroll, and compliance barriers, isolved and Remote are enabling SMBs to compete for global talent. The episode 'How isolved and Remote Are Opening Global Hiring to SMBs' is available now wherever podcasts are heard.
