Small and midsized businesses (SMBs) can now access global hiring capabilities through a new partnership between isolved, a human capital management technology provider, and Remote, a global employment platform. The collaboration, discussed in an episode of the podcast 'You Should Know' hosted by William Tincup, aims to collapse the legal, payroll, and compliance barriers that have historically prevented SMBs from hiring internationally.
Barry Gauch, Executive Vice President at isolved, and Pim Altena, GM for Remote Embedded and VP of Partnerships at Remote, detailed how the partnership emerged from an isolved request for proposal that narrowed ten providers to five. A referral relationship preceded the deeper embedded integration, with Remote's API-first model differentiating it from competitors. The integration offers three hiring modalities within a single platform: Employer of Record (EOR) for fast market entry, contractor management for flexible engagements, and global payroll for established international teams.
Gauch explained that isolved's customer demand for global hiring had increased, leading the company to seek a partner rather than build the capability in-house. 'It's not our key competency, but we know we needed to deliver it,' he said. Altena framed the opportunity in personal terms, recalling his time as a Remote customer trying to hire an Italian candidate he could not legally employ. 'You're hiring people for skills, right? Like, that's what you should do, but you're actually constraining yourself often unconsciously by just the compliance capabilities, the legal entity footprint that you already have as a business,' he said.
The conversation highlighted the operational complexity of global employment, with Tincup noting that the State Department recognizes 192 countries, each with its own federal, state, and municipal payroll rules. Altena pointed to extreme divergence in labor law, citing that pre-employment medical exams are mandatory in some jurisdictions and forbidden in others, and emphasized the high employee-protection regimes in France and Germany. Gauch emphasized that affordability and white-glove customer treatment were non-negotiable criteria, and previewed how the integration with ApplicantPro, now fully folded into isolved, will excite talent acquisition teams and staffing-company resellers looking for one platform instead of many.
The partnership comes as skill-based hiring accelerates, making the ability to hire globally a competitive advantage for SMBs. By embedding Remote's global employment infrastructure into isolved's platform, businesses can now access a unified solution for managing international talent, from compliance to payroll, without needing to navigate complex legal landscapes themselves.
