Hiring and Paying People Beyond the UK

Bringing on someone abroad feels like one task, but it's really two, and mixing them up is where businesses come unstuck. The first is the employment and tax question: whether the person is legally your employee or a genuine contractor where they live, what you're required to do about tax and social contributions, where their obligations sit, and whether you need a local entity or an employer-of-record arrangement to do it properly. Those answers vary enormously by country and by individual, they carry real consequences if you get them wrong, and they're firmly the domain of a qualified adviser, a specialist payroll provider, or an employer-of-record service. We won't state a rule or a rate on any of it, because the right answer depends on details we're not positioned to judge.

The second problem is more practical, and it's ours: once you know what someone should be paid, getting that money to them, in their currency, on the day they expect it, without the amount wobbling because the exchange rate moved. Paid through a standard business account, cross-border salaries and contractor invoices often carry a per-payment charge and a margin in the rate, and across a team paid every month that adds up. We handle that side, at a fixed and transparent margin with no payment transfer fees, so the people you've hired are paid properly and you can forecast what payroll costs you in pounds.

This is for UK businesses building teams that reach past the UK. An architecture practice with a drafting and visualisation team in Vietnam, paid monthly against project milestones. A direct-to-consumer brand that's hired its first country manager in Germany to open a new market. A podcast network paying a rotating set of freelance editors in Mexico and Poland, invoice by invoice. A renewable-energy consultancy that took on a specialist engineer in Kenya because that's where the expertise was.

Some of these people are employees, some are contractors, and the difference matters a great deal for tax and employment law, just not to the mechanics of paying them. What unites these businesses is that they've decided talent isn't confined to one country, and now they need the money side to be as dependable as a domestic payslip. If you're weighing up your first hire abroad and want the currency picture before you commit, our currency risk management page covers keeping recurring costs steady, and the whole set sits on the business hub.

Employee or contractor, and where they're taxed. Whether someone counts as an employee or a self-employed contractor, and where their tax and social security obligations fall, are legal questions that depend on the country and the working relationship. Getting classification wrong can be expensive. Before you set anyone up, take this to an accountant, a specialist global-payroll provider, or an employer-of-record service. We won't state the rules here, and neither should anyone selling you a payments service.

Whether you need an employer of record. If you don't have a legal entity in the person's country, an employer-of-record (EOR) service can employ them on your behalf and handle the local compliance, while you direct the work. It's a common route for a first hire in a new country. Whether it's right for you is a decision to take with an adviser, but it's worth knowing the option exists before you default to treating everyone as a contractor.

Which currency they want to be paid in. Most people want their pay in their local currency, landing predictably. Agreeing that up front avoids surprises, and it's what our international payroll service is built around.

Keeping take-home steady. If you're paying a set salary, a moving exchange rate means the pound cost drifts month to month even when nothing's changed. A forward contract lets you fix a rate ahead of a run, so you know what a person's pay costs you in pounds and they receive a consistent amount. Because pay dates are usually fixed, that tends to fit better than waiting on the market.