International Back Office Solutions

It’s always important to acknowledge the extra risks attached to making international placements, but here at TBOS we’re well aware that the potential is almost unlimited. Recruiting across borders is a great opportunity – so how do you make the most of it?

Why Work Abroad?

First and foremost, by working in another nation as well you create some insulation from economic issues at home; you’ll always have some extra income that may not be affected by the same crash.

There are industry sectors that can definitely benefit from this; the construction industry – and the oil industry – both see projects boom in different parts of the world at different times and often see workers hop from nation to nation to follow the bigger jobs – and smart recruiters will do much the same.

For British recruiters, there’s a huge overseas opportunity produced by the training our North Sea oil interests required; British pipeline specialists are active across the world.

There are quite a few industries where UK workers are sought after internationally, and handling recruitment which sends British contractors abroad can be very lucrative – a lot of UK workers are happy to head overseas to sunnier climes.

Making it Work

When you first start branching out overseas, you need to keep a few things in mind so that you’re ready for it.

It’s important to remember that you’re going to be starting from scratch. Just like when your agency started at home, you’ll need time to establish a reputation, and time to build up a new contacts bank. But the payoff is worth it – you’ll have the chance to open up a whole new market!

Obviously there are other things you need to have a handle on – setting up to recruit in a new country involves answering a lot of the same questions as setting up your agency in the first place. The solutions you need in place increase in complexity with the number of countries you’re working with – so be careful with that.

National Employment Law

Your first step has to be making sure you have a clear understanding of the local legislation regarding contractors and their payments – tax laws in particular.

It’s also important to check that your invoice finance company will work with that country, which is one of many reasons TBOS Freedom is popular with agencies working internationally – we work with 170+ countries in fifteen different currencies.

Employment law varies from country to country and the laws of your home nation and the other country may interact in unusual ways, so it’s important to get those clear before committing to anything that could potentially open you up to new levels of liability.

There’s no substitute here for a back office with international experience; learning the essentials while also building the business is twice the effort, after all. We’ve had recruiters come to us to make this easier who’d never seen the need for external back office support before, but who now found themselves wanting to connect to TBOS Complete.

To discuss how TBOS could help or to get a good overview of the questions you’ll need to answer, you can call us on 0845 881 1112, email enquiries@tbos.co.uk, or fill out our contact form.


Stewart Roberts

Written by Stewart Roberts

Posts By Topics

see all

Subscribe to our blog