By Anton van Heerden, CEO, DNA EOR
Data from global hiring platform Teamed highlights that high-growth startups are now expanding internationally three times faster than they were three years ago. Yes, leading companies are establishing teams in more than three countries within their first six to twelve months of international hiring – a process that historically took eighteen to twenty-four months.
That acceleration is happening because a specific type of company has worked out that the ability to hire quickly and compliantly across borders is a competitive advantage in itself.
The agility gap between SMBs and multinationals
The companies moving fastest are the growing businesses with between ten and two hundred employees, typically founder-led or run by a lean leadership team, where a single decision-maker can evaluate an opportunity, make a call, and start the hiring process within days.
A multinational’s international hiring decision typically requires HR, legal, finance, procurement, and executive sign-off, each department running its own review at its own pace. By the time paperwork reaches a shortlisted candidate, weeks or months have passed and the candidate has often moved on.
For a smaller and fast-scaling business, the window between identifying a talent need and making an offer can be measured in days. In a competitive talent market, it is a structural advantage that larger organisations structurally cannot replicate.
The cost differential is real (and it compounds)
Speed matters, but so does economics. Raj Bharya, founder of engineering consultancy Ingeni Solutions, put a number on it after expanding across multiple markets: “In Italy, a base salary of £100,000 would actually work out as a cost of £142,000 for us if you include employment contributions. However, in Romania the same salary would cost us a total of £102,000.” A £40,000 annual difference per employee, as Bharya notes, funds an additional role – a material advantage for any business managing growth carefully. Multiply that across five or ten hires and the compounding effect on runway becomes substantial.
When every hire is a deliberate decision, the cost differential between markets determines how far a budget stretches and how quickly a team can grow.
The operating challenge
The cost case for international hiring is increasingly well understood. What catches companies more often is the operating reality of managing people across time zones and cultures. Seamus Begley, founder of creative brand agency Studio of Possible, is direct about it: “You can’t rely on people overhearing conversations in an office. Expectations need to be clear, decisions need to be documented, and feedback needs to happen quickly.”
The upside of getting this right, Begley argues, goes beyond operational efficiency. “Different markets, different experiences, and different perspectives lead to better conversations and, ultimately, better ideas. The best creative work rarely comes from everyone agreeing.” For companies building client-facing, creative, or analytical functions, that diversity of perspective is a genuine product differentiator rather than a management complexity.
Where South Africa fits into this
For companies specifically looking for English-speaking, professionally trained talent in a market that operates in the same time zone as Western Europe and upholds internationally aligned professional standards, South Africa belongs firmly in that conversation.
Lindsey O’Neill manages HR and people operations across two UK fintech businesses that built their South African teams through DNA EOR. Her experience surprised her: “The volume and quality of talent we accessed in South Africa is something we hadn’t seen elsewhere. It opened up a whole new market for us, and the team has truly become an extension of our business.”
Ben Tellez, Business Director at Talent Force Global, an Andorra-based outsourcing business tasked with rapidly building a sales team for a major UK client, grew from zero to over 60 full-time South African sales and business development representatives in under a year. His team operates at approximately 70% lower labour cost compared to UK and US equivalents and continues to outperform benchmarks set by counterparts in those markets. “If DNA wasn’t there, we’d have a big problem,” he says. “The gains in time, efficiency, and peace of mind have been massive.”
Three mistakes that derail international hiring for growing businesses
- Treating international hiring like domestic hiring
Every country carries its own tax structure, statutory contributions, and employment law. A payroll process that runs correctly in the UK does not transfer automatically to South Africa, Germany, or the US. Local compliance requires local knowledge, and the consequences of assuming otherwise tend to surface at the worst possible moment.
- Choosing the wrong employment structure
The decision between hiring someone as a direct employee, a contractor, through a Professional Employer Organisation, or via an Employer of Record is not administrative.
A contractor arrangement suits project-based or short-term work. For a professional working full-time within your team on an ongoing basis, the same structure creates misclassification risk that labour authorities assess based on how the relationship actually operates, not what the contract says. For companies without a local entity in South Africa, an EOR is the structure that makes compliant, direct-team employment possible from day one. For those who have already established a local entity, a PEO model provides payroll and HR support while the employer retains the employment relationship directly.
- Letting growth outpace compliance
Tom Price-Daniel, co-founder of Teamed, puts it plainly: “The companies that scale smoothly build compliance into the plan from day one, instead of trying to bolt it on once they’re already spread across half a dozen markets.” Lindsey O’Neill arrived at the same conclusion from the client side: “You’re not second-guessing Google or trying to piece together foreign law. You just know it’s being handled. The protection it provides is worth it.”
The global hiring wave is a live competitive dynamic, not a strategy for later-stage businesses to consider when they are ready. The companies moving fastest on it tend to have the clearest thinking and the leanest decision-making. If your business can commit to a hire in a week, the world’s talent market is your hiring pool.
**Book a call with the DNA EOR team to discuss what the right employment structure looks like for your first international hire.
