Ep 170: Jamie Haerewa
All You Need to Know about Hiring Remotely: Practical Steps of Hiring & Firing, Tools to Use, How to Build Remote Culture & Manage Time Zone Differences
Jamie Haerewa is the co-founder and CEO of Agile HRO, a global employer of record service provider and promoter and supporter of distributed teams. With over 15 years of experience in recruitment and HR, Jamie shares practical advice and strategies for companies looking to leverage remote work and navigate the complexities of international employment.
On this episode we talk about:
The Main Challenges of Hiring Globally
Overcoming Legal and Compliance Barriers
Maintaining Company Culture in Distributed Teams
Managing Time Zone Differences
Practical Advice for Remote Termination Processes
The Role of AI in Transforming Workplaces
We are on YouTube and Linkedin as well
Watch select full-length episodes on our YouTube channel > https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP6ueaLnjS-CQfrMCm2EoTA
Connect with us on Linkedin > https://www.linkedin.com/company/pursuit-of-scrappiness/
Read the full episode transcript below
Uldis (00:03.043)
Hello, hello, hello, dear listeners. Welcome to another episode of the Pursuit of Scrappiness podcast. Whether you're building a business, running a team, or just starting out in your career, we are here to bring you scrappy and actionable insights to help you become more productive. My name is Uldis Teraudkalns and my co -host is Janis Zeps. Hi, sir.
Janis (00:23.107)
Hey.
Uldis (00:25.305)
Before we start, a quick reminder to follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts helps more than you know. In exchange to that, you will find more than 160 episodes of ageless wisdom and practical tips on how to help you build better companies. So open Spotify, open Apple Podcasts, click that subscribe and be the first one to know when we come out every Tuesday morning. Speaking of publishing every Tuesday morning, I hope you have enjoyed
the summer break that we had and we are back and today we want to talk about people and 99 out of 100 people in business will say that the team slash people is the most important factor to build a company a successful business and that's according to me and maybe that's 999 out of 1000 but you get the point. So how to find those people and many entrepreneurs have started with friends ex -colleagues
other people in their closest network. And that can sometimes work. Like for example, Jordan Belfort hired his weed dealer friends in Wolf of Wall Street to build the greatest sales team ever. But often your network is not enough to build a great team. And depending on where you're based, your city might not be enough or even your country might not be enough to get the right people.
Jamie (01:33.497)
Thank
Uldis (01:51.425)
So thankfully remote work and distributed teams were invented to solve this problem. But our company is using the full potential offered by this opportunity. And to answer that, among other questions, we have invited Jamie Haerewa to the show. Hi, Jamie.
Jamie (02:09.315)
Hi, thanks for having me.
Uldis (02:12.441)
Yeah, and Jamie is the co -founder and CEO of Agile HRO, a leading global employer of record and payroll solutions provider. And having spent more than 15 years in recruitment and HR, Jamie brings a wealth of experience to discuss such topics as hiring globally, maintaining and developing a distributed team, as well as the future of work and how AI is going to change the way we do it. So to jump in, obviously not everybody is doing
hiring across countries and hiring globally. mean, globally maybe sounds like super, super for very big companies, but still. So what are the main kind of concerns and reasons why are companies refraining from looking further than their nearest vicinity?
Jamie (03:01.391)
There are a few reasons companies might hesitate. Some of them we actually saw during COVID and pre -COVID and now going into post -COVID. So the most concerns that we saw was the worry about legal and compliance complexities, not knowing what a territory or how to even...
employ someone into that territory, how to facilitate it, what compliances they need to look for. So those were some of the top challenges that companies faced. And then the other side is once you worked the legal and and clients out is the fear of the communication barriers, difficulties in maintaining a strong company culture. If you're not there in co -located spaces.
Time differences can also be a concern, and especially if you want real -time collaboration. So, yeah, if you start with illegal and compliance, then the other concerns will also
Uldis (04:12.577)
Okay, but so in terms of this kind of also maybe mentality and philosophy, it kind of feels when talking to different entrepreneurs, it's kind of like almost like political views. So what's your kind of view on office policy, right? It's like that you have the far, right? Let's call it, you know, five days at the office, you have the...
You have the moderates, which is like, we come like two to three days to the office and then work from home. And then you have the progressives, the liberals doing full remote. And it feels like it's kind of like, you know, almost religious and very strong polarization.
in that, have you also encountered that, that it's kind of mentality also of the founders or the CEO that plays this strong role, which is very hard to overcome whatever rational arguments you put in front of them.
Jamie (05:15.577)
Yeah, definitely there are other founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs that have that opinion. I'm so biased because all of my career I've managed to work autonomously and kind of remotely, even though I was working for a company before. And then I built Agile to be fully remote. So I'm obviously biased towards that way, but I do, you know, agree that remote is not for everyone.
And even some individuals might not thrive in a remote environment, so they might need their peers around. also met with friends and entrepreneurs that run like very...
like Jordan Belfort, aggressive sales teams. And the feedback that I had gotten from the salespeople themselves were actually we want to be in an office because we want the energy. We don't get that at home. I can't be motivated to hit those aggressive targets. So while I think remote can work, it really comes down to the individual, maybe what they're doing and also
Janis (06:04.821)
Hmph.
Jamie (06:29.935)
how the entrepreneur and founder is driving their either remote work or hybrid in office policies or culture.
Uldis (06:41.175)
And you yourself, you don't have any offices yourself at all or? Okay.
Janis (06:41.357)
Yeah, it's a word.
Jamie (06:44.535)
No, we don't. No, we don't. We offer all of our employees like remote work, sorry, co -work passes so they can choose like co -working place in their city where they live. But no, we don't have a physical office.
Janis (07:01.101)
Yeah, we can only wish it would be so easy that, you know, somebody comes into your company and says like, you can be remote or you cannot, but I'm just started to, when we're discussing, started listing all the factors that, say from employee perspective, would need to come together for you to, for example, be happy working remotely. I mean, you might, you will need the space to work or all this co -working paths. would need to be in a role, like you said, where you don't really need immediate.
team support and feedback, know, a lot of things. And same for office. mean, if someone, I could imagine someone in his twenties might wanna enjoy the office more, but when you start having children, I think the priority of remote work for a lot of people start probably going up and they say like, you know, could commute. So I'm just thinking, how do even companies make sense of it and how, can you keep everyone happy or will we have like a bit
those who want to work in one type of company migrate to one company and another. Can company keep everyone happy with different needs and requirements?
Jamie (08:07.663)
I think that, yeah, can you keep anyone happy even if they want to do remote work? So that would be the magic sauce if we could figure that
Uldis (08:09.483)
No is the answer, but okay, Jamie will let you.
Janis (08:18.114)
Yeah.
Janis (08:23.32)
Yeah.
Uldis (08:24.375)
No, but overall, think what Jan started also touching upon is that I think it's very, and I encountered it myself in the company that I run, is that how do you fit all these different needs and requirements? I mean, it's very easy if you run, for example, some consultancy, the completely, you know, like, or
you know, a small law firm or a small law office where there's, you know, people doing very, very, very similar, you know, services type of work. And the roles are
you know different but kind of similar but then you have you know technology companies you have you have developers you have sales you have in some areas compliance you know legal all kind of support all kind of roles and you know if if if you come and say that you know for example everybody is coming to the office then you know you don't have a developer team anymore and if you if you say that everybody is working remote then you might also be
losing out and like how many people do you have in your company and and like have you lost people because you are you don't have any offices
Jamie (09:41.839)
No, we haven't lost anyone. Our team is around 10 people and we haven't lost anyone because since we've started as a remote company, we've hired based on that. So it's not a shock to someone during the hiring process. And it was very important to me that during our hiring process, we're going to find team members that are aligning to the cultural fit. They're fully aware
They're not going to have a team. They might not have a team member in the same city as them. And then really digging into whether or not they would be a good fit as a remote team member. do have, I was telling all this before that we do have our headquarters in Singapore where we do have quite a few of the team members. So they actually get together and co
every couple of weeks together on a Friday and network with each other. So that's good. keeps up, you know, a little bit of, I guess, in humanity. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, for me, it's been a different experience because we've hired specifically people that remote work. So if someone came to me and said, like, I can't remote work and it's happened in the past in certain roles.
Uldis (10:49.557)
humanity.
Jamie (11:07.695)
but they're in a place where we don't have a team, we don't want to hire a huge team, then it's not a right fit for us and it's definitely not a right fit for them because they won't thrive in this environment.
Janis (11:21.295)
That's a good point. Actually, you can solve so many problems in the hiring process, potentially down the road. I don't know if it's true or not, but on LinkedIn I see so many grievances about a different problem from people. Maybe people just try to come up with content and fake problems on LinkedIn, which I can also imagine. a lot of them are like writing, companies are offering remote work, but when you actually join, it turns out that, you know,
Uldis (11:39.515)
That is probably true.
Janis (11:50.754)
boss would prefer you really to be in office or something like that. Kind of misleading expectations in the hiring process.
Jamie (11:57.923)
I've seen that as well, or they say remote, but only remote in your city. So it doesn't mean you can go and have that digital nomad lifestyle.
Janis (12:08.51)
Eh, that's true.
Uldis (12:10.221)
That is also pretty common. have also seen and can't say that I fully understood, yeah, I mean, there is, I guess we can go pretty deep down on that. But if we get back to the initial that we started, you have decided that your city is not big enough or your closest network is not sufficient. And you have decided, okay, I wanna now...
hire globally? I have these three openings that I need to hire for. Where do you start? How to prepare? Who to talk to? Where to start looking for? Does it depend on the role? What are the factors to consider to even start hiring outside of your comfort zone?
Jamie (13:03.252)
I'll preface by saying that remote work or the mindset of remote work isn't a location strategy, it's a talent strategy. So where the future of work is and is going is about hiring the best people globally and not just locally. So with that in mind, I would say that the first step to going global is really understanding your talent needs and the target markets.
So research, remote work regulations in the countries that maybe you're interested in entering or you are interested in testing out whether they have that talent that you're really needing and identify or define what your remote work policies might be to ensure that you're going to be able to have your team connected and collaborated with the right infrastructure.
obviously before hiring anyone. And then seeking advice from global employment experts or services like Agile, for instance, or utilizing platforms like LinkedIn, Upwork, and specialized remote job boards to find the talent.
Uldis (14:20.953)
So that's basically then I need a developer, customer success and a product manager. then like is there and I am now fully decided that I don't care about location and then there's a lot of countries in the world. So what should I do? What do you think?
Jamie (14:47.075)
Well, I think firstly with your job description, go to the job boards where they have specific remote talents. LinkedIn is a good resource, also Upwork, but there are job boards that are specifically focused in like it's WeWork Remotely, something like Remote Jobs. I think
there because you can really search based on the talent and need of what you're looking for. Open the job descriptions up as well to be, yeah, remote globally as an example. And then once you've found the person that you think, okay, this is the best of the bunch, then you start looking into,
say global employment expert do I then need to talk to about executing to onboard and employ this person legally?
Janis (15:49.096)
Exactly, what would be the next step? let's say we go on LinkedIn, we find the person we really like, go through interviews, everything looks great, and the person asks like, what is the next step? How are you going to hire me? And what are the options that you recommend in that sense? What work in the companies look into? how, like you mentioned, this legal obstacle is always, in many
people's minds, like the biggest one, right? So how big is it or how maybe easy it is? Maybe people overestimate how hard is it to hire. So can you walk us through an experience of like a startup founder who would need to hire someone in completely different country? Let's say these three roles, each of them in different country, how that person can approach
Jamie (16:35.247)
How they can approach it is two ways. I'm going to be biased and recommend the first way because this will allow you to quickly enter a new country, a location, it's going to save you time and save you money. It is using an EOR platform. So the employer record is going to be responsible for your local employment contract, ensuring your employee, they're to be responsible for managing all your HR legal
clients to ensure that they are paying the local taxes and social securities. And they'll be responsible for paroling the employee, of course. So that is the quickest option and the least risky for an entrepreneur or a new startup. And also, you save costs. The second option is maybe you've got to a stage where you want to hire multiple employees.
then you would set up your own entity. In doing that, incorporating your own entity, then you'll have to take care of all the legal and compliance yourself under your own entity. So that means employment contracts through a lawyer, perhaps hiring a local HR person, a payroll person, an accountant. So yeah, the second way is when you really want to establish your company in that location.
Uldis (18:03.929)
But in the first way, like, for example, your company, like, what's your coverage? Like, how many countries do you you cover? like, would I be able to assume that that, you know, if I find, you know, a person in 80 % of the countries, then you know, Jamie has me covered, you know, she will take care of all of the all of the legal and accounting and everything.
Jamie (18:29.007)
Yes, absolutely. So we cover 180 countries, Agile plus our consortium of partners. So we'll be able to do that for, yeah, 180 countries.
Janis (18:41.763)
That's... North Korea maybe is not there, I guess,
Uldis (18:42.009)
180 that's a lot of countries. I don't know how many participate in Olympics, but
Jamie (18:47.907)
North Korea's not. I dare to enter there. But Africa, Middle East, La Tome, APAC, and USA, yes. I covered.
Janis (19:02.832)
Another thing, I've worked with a platform as well and they can, like I said, they can be super smooth for the employer and I don't think it's even an obstacle in these days. There is no legal or whatever obstacle, you just pay to another company a fee in X and they can do whatever they want. One person, two person, can hire an entire team for you if you want. From the company's perspective, is it costly thing to do it via
companies such as yours or can it also be a not that expensive solution? Because of course setting up a subsidiary in the country, costs a lot as well.
Jamie (19:44.175)
Yeah. So it's not expensive if you're giving someone else the risk. And, you know, what better to then focus on growing your actual business than worrying about HR and paperwork. So give it to the experts where you know that your employees will be paid on time. Everything's going to be done properly.
Janis (19:55.043)
Mm -hmm.
Jamie (20:11.625)
and it gives you more time to focus on your
Uldis (20:17.663)
You have in several publications you have stressed that you know cultural fit is the main prerequisite of for a successful remote work setup and how do you hire for cultural fit besides them knowing that you're a distributed company? Have you discovered some ways to test it either during the hiring or or probation period process like
How do you test for or how would you advise to test for cultural fit as it's such a vague thing, kind of subjective thing, you know?
Jamie (20:53.955)
Yeah, it's subjective. I love this topic. I definitely think that cultural fit is the bedrock of successful remote teams. Now, to assess that. I have a couple of tips. You have to involve your team within the hiring process because you as a founder, even though you're going to set
the culture of the company and it all comes from you. It also goes down into your team members. You've hired your team members, you've been operating, they share the same culture fit as you. That's why you guys are being successful. So incorporating the team into the hiring process, assessing the candidates' values and attitudes. We, as an example, when I was hiring my team,
One of our core values is empathy, social mission. And we share that with a lot of our employees, actually all of the employees. I'll give you an example. I offered a trip so everyone can meet each other if we do well as a business at the end of this year. And I said, name any destination. They all wrote back and said,
we want to go visit the kids we've been sponsoring in Cambodia for the last four years. And that like really touched my heart because I've built such an empathetic and like for me, that's inspiring. I gave them anywhere in the world and that's where they chose. yeah, I think really choosing your team.
Jamie (22:45.901)
on values, attitudes, involving your team in the hiring process. What else? Probe deeper, like probe deeper during the interviews. Ask questions that might reveal a candidate's values and their work style as well. And then...
Janis (22:47.481)
Mm -hmm.
Jamie (23:10.305)
Obviously, apart from the skills, you need to consider the time zones, the working styles, the tools that the team uses. So seeing whether or not they have any experience using these tools, how they might use them in their previous jobs, how they would use them to interact with their teams. And going back to the probing questions, how they've collaborated with remote teams before, because also collaboration within your team also helps to build a culture.
Janis (23:41.326)
Actually, you mentioned time zone is a good point, like, because we brought up this hypothetical company who allows remote work only from the same city. So you could be sitting in like a next building and working there. Honestly, within like two hour difference, three hour difference in a time zone, that's almost the same, right? You could be in the same city or you could be in, you know, we are in Europe now. We could be in like Africa because it's the same time zone essentially, or plus minus one, two hours.
Uldis (23:53.814)
you
Janis (24:10.031)
What about when it gets more than that? you see, is it popular to hire somebody who like six, seven hour time difference or companies mostly cluster their people within one, two, three time zones?
Jamie (24:25.903)
mostly cluster in one, two, three time zones. And it also depends on where the leader of the team is and most of their teams. So for instance, you could have, yeah, someone in Europe that's working on one plus or minus one, two, three time zones. But yeah, it's genuinely, rarely do I see someone hiring in a 12 hour time zone.
Janis (24:29.998)
Mm -hmm.
Janis (24:52.143)
And honestly, it's also a bit of this myth that people like to propagate that I'm working from a pool in Caribbean or I have a house in Bali and I work from here for a European company and this can work obviously, I'm not saying it can't but I think it's just you need to be realistic about that because from what I've seen more than a few hours it's gonna make
You know, if you're going to wake up while everybody else is going to bed and you have one hour overlap, and I can't see, this is a smooth working model as well. yeah, I just maybe one of the myths to be careful about.
Jamie (25:32.719)
Yeah, I mean, I remember starting agile, working with Asia. was starting at 2, 3 a just to make sure I maximized the day of the team. I can now sleep in, I can say comfortably until 6. So I just get half the day now.
Janis (25:39.406)
Mm -hmm.
Uldis (25:51.893)
Yeah, I guess your setup between Portugal and Singapore is quite a few hours difference in time zones. So what kind of tools and practices have you found to be the most efficient to run such a
Jamie (26:12.047)
So the first tool, and it's not even a tool, is just managing the time zone expectations. So if APAC needs to work with Europe, they'll start later and finish later. So we have the flexible working. But in terms of managing and collaborating with the team effectively, we actually use Teams and Slack. They're our primary.
Communication platforms. Yeah, we use, I'm a little, I don't like the messenger on Teams. So we use Teams for calling, but I don't like the messengers. So we use Slack for, yeah, exactly.
Uldis (26:44.161)
Wait, you use both?
Uldis (26:48.215)
That's interesting.
Uldis (26:53.261)
Okay.
Uldis (26:59.287)
Yeah, and calls on Slack are weird as well, so I guess that there is some kind of logic there.
Janis (27:02.18)
this too.
Jamie (27:05.643)
If they could merge, that would be fantastic. Please.
Janis (27:08.342)
Slack not having video calls is one of their, that's where they lost I think a
Jamie (27:15.641)
Yeah, well the video calling isn't great.
Janis (27:16.676)
I mean, they, it's shit. Exactly, it's like, it's not comparable to Teams or Google Suite, yeah.
Jamie (27:24.227)
Yeah, exactly. And then for project management, and this is really to organize tasks, set deadlines and monitor project progress. We use ClickUp.
Yeah, it's just to make sure that, again, being distributed, we're not there to check, hey, how is it going with this? So we can just log in, see, OK, they have the deadline. They're progressing in it. And we get notified when finished. We use Pipe Drive for our CRM, which has been quite good. And then one
most impactful tools that we use is, it was called Play, but it's called People Logic. So this helps us measure, track, and improve the team's performance. So you can put the company OKRs, the team's OKRs, it integrates directly with Slack so that everyone can also see.
the team's progress collectively or individually, and it also creates a feedback loop that you can integrate that your team members, your peers can give you feedback when you're doing well too. So we use it for OKRs and employee engagement.
Uldis (28:59.767)
Yeah, I was about to ask about performance measurement and performance management. So I guess you can answer that. you work with OKRs. Any other specifically targeted at distributed teams performance measurement practices?
Jamie (29:20.015)
Yeah, the team has clear milestones that they have to hit on a monthly basis. So we do track those under the OKVRs as well within the same platform. And yeah, that is about it. The tasks are done on a weekly basis. So actually the team sets their own tasks.
We all go through them on a Monday, we get together and discuss what has been done and what hasn't been done, why hasn't been done, what they need help with. But in real time, as you guys know, business is just going, going, going. So we end up with a huge task list every other day that we didn't even know about that's going to happen on Monday. So that's when it's really good to use a project
tool to help track those and then keep going through them on a weekly basis.
Uldis (30:25.953)
Are there any recurring issues that still frustrates you because of this remote setup or not specifically anymore?
Jamie (30:38.235)
one recurring issue is not really an issue, we were sitting here the other day and you weren't going, Asia has a lot of public holidays. So, you know, if you have a big Asian team and you're a small remote company, then like half the team is off and you're like, where is everyone? so that was just one of the, you can't fix that. You can't fix that. You know,
It was just something that we just, becomes a challenge. Definitely if you need someone who has that skill, but they're on a different time zone, different country and different public holidays than you are. But yeah, it's something that we just have to work with and navigate.
Janis (31:27.352)
That's a good point. You need to have them in calendars and know if one person is in country X. In some countries, even in different states, the holidays differ. So you can end up not having your key developer on random Tuesday if you don't follow and plan, I guess.
Jamie (31:45.933)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Uldis (31:49.685)
Have you discovered some unique management skills that help running such a company as a CEO or as a team lead to run a distributed team? there any specific skills that you should have?
Jamie (32:08.801)
Yeah, I...
Uldis (32:09.771)
besides patience.
Jamie (32:14.447)
True. I think the biggest skill that I have learned leading a distributed team is that it's not about control. It's about creating an environment where you allow your team to be rock stars and they can shine. I think everyone that's an entrepreneur or founder can share that it's your baby, so you can control, control, control. Everything comes past me. But
When you let it go and you, you watch your team just absolutely take ownership and they shine. Wow. It makes your days go by much easier. You can focus on what you need to. so that was a real learning curve for me and yeah, to enhance or break that down. Communication goes a long way. being transparent, accessible.
I'm not one of these CEOs that like no one can reach me just because, you know, they're in a different role or they don't report to me. I'm accessible if anyone needs me. Yeah, being the team's go -to info hub, I think you can say, like keeping that door open, being accessible in that way. Leading with empathy and trust. That honestly becomes a CEO or a
super power because you're then fostering a culture where everyone can feel safe to share ideas. They can make mistakes. They can learn from it. They can learn from each other. They can learn from you. And then embracing the flexibility lifestyle. obviously being a global employment company who is remote first, we
We have to, and we do, respect the diverse working styles, time zones, going back to public holidays. And yeah, we just have to get on board with it. yeah.
Janis (34:29.508)
Giving up control.
Uldis (34:29.537)
I've really struggled with that, to be honest. I really struggled with that. That's because in some roles it's easier to track and see the productivity, the performance, et cetera. And the bigger you grow also for me as a CEO, it was harder and harder to see, you know, whatever somebody did on a
on a day to day basis. And then I would get these paranoid. So, okay, so people are now working more than half of the week remotely. They're probably not even doing anything. They're just slacking off or something like that. And then we get to OKRs, they're kind of like 65 or 75 % done. It's kind of okay. then it's just, I would say that I think a lot of it, paranoia, but something that I really struggled with too.
Jamie (35:12.579)
Yeah.
Uldis (35:27.139)
to really embrace that flexibility. If somebody goes like, yeah, hey, I want to take a week workation and I'm going to be like, yeah, I really want to be progressive and allow that. But then I'm going to be like torn afterwards that, know, should have I or what. So it's challenging to fully embrace that.
Jamie (35:49.844)
Well, then it comes to the question, like, what do you do when someone's underperforming in a remote job and how do you get them on track? And so what we tend to do is put someone on a performance improvement plan with, you know, strict deadlines. We increase the communication, we increase the amount of calls to support them to either, you know, get to the stage where they need to
performing and achieving the results that they should be in their role. Or we come to the conclusion where, okay, it's not a right fit for you and it's not fitting for us anymore. So I think that's only natural to, if someone is not performing in their role and not helping meet deadlines when they know. So you can be flexible if someone wants to
as long as they're hitting the targets,
Uldis (36:51.107)
Yeah, for sure, for sure. And that randomly made me think of a question, a follow -up here. obviously, you work remotely, you probably hire remotely.
What about firing? Do you also fire people remotely as it's you know often considered at least in our culture that you know if you Fire somebody over the phone. That's not exactly you know the most polite way how to treat that situation So you know George Clooney was was flying all over the US to fire people or
Janis (37:17.113)
And
Jamie (37:17.188)
Yeah.
Janis (37:22.118)
And also can you comment on the legal side of it because I recall when Twitter got taken over by Musk he fired a lot of people in Europe and apparently he didn't know that in Europe you cannot do it like in America, you know, bye bye. So how would the remote payroll companies help with that as well? Maybe you can cover both aspects.
Jamie (37:42.913)
Okay. So, firing remotely is obviously it's not the best thing to do. You want to be, you know, be empathetic, give the employee more of a face to face. However, that's not the reality anymore. So it's the same as if you're in a meeting with them, in the same location. So, yeah, making sure
whatever the reason why you're terminating them, you're being extra careful in how you're wording the termination, how you're explaining it to them, allowing them to give their insights on maybe it's performance related or whatever the reason may be.
Yeah, it's just remembering that you're dealing with a human on the other end of FaceTime. But it's not that different than terminating in person.
Janis (38:46.565)
and the legal side of it.
Jamie (38:46.916)
I would
Uldis (38:47.073)
And it's practical, yeah, practical.
Jamie (38:50.489)
The legal side of it? Well, the legal side of it is quite black and white. Take us, for example, when we are terminating someone because we own the entities. So we just follow the process of the legalities of the country. We look into it before we obviously present to the employees, make sure that we have everything aligned, any severance packages owed.
any owed annual leave or sick leave days so that the compensation when we present the termination to the employee is completely worked out before and that we know that we are mitigating any risks when it comes to the employee wanting to sue us. So making sure we have that all aligned before talking with the employee.
Jamie (39:43.501)
And then having the documentation already prepared. So once you've had the conversation, you can send it to
Uldis (39:43.511)
Okay and speaking of
Janis (39:52.173)
I remember in Finland we had to, based on law, had to read out, a lawyer had to read out a paper to fire someone in person. I don't know how it works now, but there are these nuances. I think a good thing for company to know is that I guess they're outsourcing this problem to companies like yours, right? They don't have to, like how is it working in Norway or USA or Germany? They just, you know, they don't worry about it,
Uldis (40:00.098)
my god.
Uldis (40:03.828)
my god.
Jamie (40:20.185)
True. And sometimes it's the worst when a client goes and fires someone, but they're under our entity employment. And I'm like, you shouldn't have done that. Now we have to go mitigate the risk for us. Yeah. So if you're going to use and sorry, if you're going to use an employer of record, please involve them in the termination process.
Janis (40:28.538)
Yeah.
Uldis (40:38.371)
So speaking of firing...
Uldis (40:47.665)
That's some very good practical advice. And as we are speaking now so much about termination, I think that's a very natural segue to go into the topic of how AI is transforming the workplace and how to answer
to the concerns that everybody is going to get fired because of AI. So what do you see, what transformations besides distribution, remote, workations and all of that flexibility, what kind of trends do you see in the development of the relationship between the employee and the company and the way how people work these days?
Janis (41:32.44)
Yeah, you must follow these trends and data, so can you calm us down or are there massive layoffs going on and robots are taking our place as we speak?
Jamie (41:37.763)
Yeah.
Jamie (41:44.595)
Robots aren't going to take our place, but I do think AI will and it is starting to revolutionize the workplace by acting as a copilot. So for the workforce, AI will be a copilot instead of replacing you at your job. It should be your assistant and helping you do your job. So most of the repetitive tasks will fully be automated. We already see a new change of
I spoke to a company that their HR mentioned to me, like they're thinking, how can they use AI now to pull them away from being, you know, doing these administrative tasks that might take them hours to do, to focus on strategy and yeah, ways to grow the company rather than.
focusing on these menial tasks. I think that in the certainly in the near future, AI is going to assist with that data analysis will become easier, which is, mean, already started about five to 10 years ago, but then it's also going to make decision making and hopefully progress for companies to make better and quicker decisions and companies is sorry, employees as well. And for companies, I think
AI is going to affect each industry differently. So
For an example, AI and HR right now, you're able to use AI to screen and source candidates in the recruitment process. You can use AI to automate tasks on the onboarding process, and you can use AI to systemize your employee engagement and feedback system. So that's just one way you can use AI. The finance industry is already using it to optimize trading strategies.
Jamie (43:53.263)
detecting fraud, hopefully that gets better. So that would be a positive for not just the person individual, but for companies as well.
Janis (44:03.989)
Fraud will also get better because of AI, so it's a bit of a race.
Jamie (44:07.573)
my god, that is true. That's true. So it's always going to be like this for that area.
Janis (44:16.11)
By the way, for remote company, do you do something to just make sure that nobody impersonates you in a call and asks to transfer all company money to some account? Is there anything remote companies should discuss? Because in person, in office, I can check with my boss, like, hey, did you send this email to me to transfer one million? But remotely, can receive emails. Now you can receive video calls, as we saw. I think in Asia, there was a case in Hong Kong.
Is it something companies should remotely start worrying about or at least thinking about?
Jamie (44:51.631)
think so. But we've actually seen a rise in scams against EOR companies. So we've been getting so many scams of like fake companies wanting to hire their employees. And they're like, they'll say 10 employees, they all seem to be on the same salary. The company looks a little bit dodgy, even though you can ask for their KYC incorporation documents, they'll be fake. And that's a risk for EOR
these actually, because if you sign on with them, we have risk measures in place. So we ask for a security deposit just in case the client goes bankrupt and we have to end the employment but still be liable for the employment costs. So we've found one instance where they wouldn't transfer that. So we canceled the contract and then we realized, actually it was a scam.
So had we had issued the employment contracts, we still would have been liable to pay all of the 10 employees. So we've seen a rise in those types of scams. But
Uldis (46:01.158)
So basically the scammers would be both the client and the employees and then try to scam you in the middle? that's cute.
Jamie (46:06.018)
Yes.
Yeah. But it doesn't go that far because you can't, we can't onboard to the platform, the client or the employee, because you have to go through certain checks. So ID verification is just one of them. So thank God we have built a secure platform for that.
Uldis (46:30.329)
Well, that comes in handy in these kind of situations.
Jamie (46:33.911)
Mm -hmm, for sure. But I'll keep an eye on the other way if people's gonna impersonate me. Hope not.
Uldis (46:43.15)
Yeah, yeah, that's something that we all are at risk of.
Janis (46:46.373)
Well, the bad thing you're now doing, you're putting your voice sample out in the internet, which is enough to... I'm sorry about that. But no, no, but it's not only remote companies. I think it's also personally everyone. We live in a new era, I think, and it's hard to realize that even things are moving so fast.
Uldis (46:52.934)
Ha ha.
Jamie (47:09.581)
Yeah, well we don't know what's real news or fake news right now, Aether.
Uldis (47:15.861)
I love fake videos because they make them so funny these days that you can actually realize they're fake. The problems are starting when they make it not so funny anymore.
Anyways, we kind of jumped into completely as always. mean, have we ever had a conversation about AI when it doesn't go into scam and crime and darkness and world ending? I mean, it's just we have to start some new tunes otherwise it's going to go stale.
Janis (47:39.888)
And the world ending.
Janis (47:48.56)
One day maybe we will have, but one day maybe, but this is not the day. Today is not
Uldis (47:55.095)
This is not the day. Yeah.
Jamie (47:55.681)
No. And I don't think robots are going to take our jobs. They might if people don't adapt to AI though.
Janis (48:05.306)
No, no.
Uldis (48:08.17)
Okay, I think we can wrap it up. I still have time to watch some Matrix or Terminator tonight.
and I get inspired about the machines. thank you very much, Jamie, to be very helpful, insightful. think for, I would have definitely benefited from such conversation also a couple of years ago when trying to expand the team in different geographies. So yeah, I hope that some of our listeners will be also more daring to increase
the network of their hiring. Thanks to you.
Jamie (48:52.089)
Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Janis (48:57.262)
And to the listeners, we'll you next week.
Uldis (49:00.341)
We see you. Exactly. All right. Bye, guys.
Janis (49:04.58)
Bye.
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