Case Study
Supporting clients through company split situations
During the process of a company split up, one of our clients — a market-leading wireless communications and broadcasting technology business — identified a need to support 15 individuals working across the globe in five different countries.
These individuals were employed by the group but were to transfer to become employees of the new company. However, the existing company infrastructure was to remain in the ownership of the other side of the soon-to-be-split business.
The Issues
The new company had to maintain continuity for the employees. This meant staff needed to be paid locally and payroll had to be run for the relevant territory. The company benefits also needed maintaining in addition to the statutory requirements.
Additionally, new contracts needed to be issued in the different territories, in full compliance with local labour laws. As is often the case when operating across multiple countries, each territory also had its own cultural and customary differences (which can be a challenge to keep on top of) that had to be observed.
The options
After identifying the need to support its employees, the client decided it had two options available to resolve these issues.
The first option was to provide these services in-house by incorporating and setting up its own infrastructure in each territory. This would include company incorporation, bank account setup, payroll registration, annual accounting requirements, legal and HR support.
The second option was to engage the employees through a global employer of record (EOR) service or international PEO.
The decision
After initial costings, the option to support the employees internally was ruled out on the grounds of cost, complexity and time. It was then decided that it made more commercial sense to utilise a provider that offers all of these services through a PEO model.
Following this decision, the client went to market and identified a number of potential partners that could support them. TopSource Worldwide was shortlisted, and after substantive discussions with us and other providers in the space, the client chose to engage our services.
This decision was made based on:
- The professionalism of our team
- Our extensive in-house expertise
- The cost value we provide
- Our flexibility to meet the client’s needs
- Positive endorsements from our existing clients
Delivering the project
We immediately got to work and collaborated closely with the client to understand the exact requirements of their employees.
The benefits schemes, in particular, required significant work. Each territory had its own commission scheme and healthcare benefits — some even had additional local benefits like food vouchers. There was no standardisation across the territories.
Add to that extensive international travel and a global healthcare policy, and it’s easy to see why the client opted to remove the headache and complexities of this from their plate and chose to have us deliver the PEO services instead!
From signing off the agreement to the first day of official work under the employees’ ‘new employer’, the onboarding and transfer of all the consultants were completed in just six weeks.
“We partnered with TopSource Worldwide to transition five entities to PEO across EMEA, APAC and Latin America. This was a complicated transition with benefits, allowances, special exceptions and very long-tenured employees in each entity. The transfer went smoothly, was on time and on budget. We would definitely partner with TopSource Worldwide again if we needed a future EOR transfer.”