As economic globalization pushes more Chinese companies to seek a wider footprint overseas, higher demand for local managerial talent has led to the rapid development of human resources management in foreign markets, industry experts said.
Chinese enterprises, while carrying out businesses in a completely new market, often encounter workforce management and legal challenges during their operational phase, such as tax compliance, labor disputes and drafting of contracts, which may lead to significant risks or losses if no preliminary research or precautions are undertaken, said Lin Tan, founder and CEO of PayInOne, a Shanghai-based full-service global employee management and payroll platform.
“The employment landscapes are quite disparate, and venturing into unfamiliar markets has posed significant challenges to employee management and localization efforts,” said Wang Xiangwei, an HR business partner at China International Marine Containers (Group) Co Ltd. “Therefore, having authoritative and reliable support and guidance is imperative for us.”
Wang said the company has successfully built a local team quickly using PayInOne’s streamlined processes.
The platform, which regularly updates country-specific systems based on local laws and regulations, aims to support the recruitment and human resource management functions legally and efficiently when domestic businesses go global.
“Whether Chinese operators can proactively realize and deal with overseas compliance and security issues related to employment, and take necessary measures to minimize potential risks, is vital tests of their management capabilities,” Lin said.
Lin added that he has witnessed several cases of penalties being levied on employers, which could have been avoided with better and timely localization of managerial resources.
Most Chinese enterprises going abroad now engage in integrated processes — from initial investment to construction and finally, local operation — that could result in challenges no longer confined to the investment and construction phases. Instead, there is a growing need to place a stronger emphasis on risk management in the operational phase, said Wang Hong, partner and head of transaction strategy and M&A financing at KPMG China.
Leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as big data and generative artificial intelligence, Lin’s platform can advance HR management by providing customized solutions for 180 markets and 120 kinds of currencies around the world.
It can help clients accomplish all hiring procedures for a new employee within three days — a 300 percent increase in global employee management efficiency and a 50 percent cut in overall costs, Lin said.
The platform aimed to facilitate cross-regional business collaboration and talent mobility when Lin founded the company in 2021, as online and digitalized work scenarios prevailed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Following China’s optimized pandemic control measures, it is believed that Chinese business operators will witness more vibrant international exchanges and collaborations in the coming years.
By the end of 2026, the total number of employees hired by China’s overseas businesses is expected to approach 5 million, with the local workforce accounting for over 60 percent, said a report released by China Insights Consultancy earlier this year. In this regard, the country’s overseas human resources services market is expected to surpass 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) by 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of 23.5 percent in the next five years, according to the report.
In an era where more business processes are becoming digital, paired with the workforce moving away from traditional workspaces, the need to accelerate and scale talent is driving a global trend of the augmented-connected workforce, a strategy for optimizing employee value that uses intelligent online applications and workforce platforms to provide guidance and support the workforce’s experience, well-being and performance, US market research consultancy Gartner Inc said in its latest report on the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2024.
*original news link :
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202311/04/WS65457faca31090682a5ec5e1.html
