The Covid pandemic has changed the way people work, forever. Although remote work was not a foreign concept pre-Covid, many businesses were sceptical about remote working. The Covid pandemic forced businesses to embrace remote working and for the most part it worked well. Some businesses experienced a deterioration in customer service – but nothing that couldn’t be addressed.

The reality of remote working is that it doesn’t matter whether a person sits 5 kilometres or 5,000 kilometres away from the office. This made businesses look at talent differently. Suddenly businesses realised that they could “cherry-pick” the best people anywhere in the world – they were not bound to any geographical boundaries.

The only caveat was the legal requirements for employing people in foreign countries. Businesses often need a legal presence in a country to employ people. That is where EOR comes in. The EOR provider acts as the legal employer in the foreign country and manages all labour related issues e.g. employment contracts, leave, payroll and terminations.

This resulted in exponential growth of the EOR industry triggered by the Covid pandemic. The good news is that now that everyone’s eyes have opened to remote working and foreign employment, it is only the beginning of a spectacular growth story for the EOR industry – even if the Covid pandemic is (hopefully) fizzling out.