Rethinking employment in a distributed world: The future of global work

Nothing holds the key to a company’s success and ensures the business survives, thrives, and grows in certain and uncertain times more than the people who work in it. They innovate, build, sell, and care for customers on behalf of the founders.

People are the biggest asset a company has, as they bring its vision to life. Their experience as employees matters a lot, from how they are first recruited to how they are employed and treated.

We have known this for a long time. However, as of not too long ago, we have had to accept the hard truth of how unlikely it is to find the best people within commuting distance of our offices. The chances that a person will possess the right skills, have the right experience, will be sufficiently interested in the role, will have appropriate salary expectations, and be available to start right now are very slim.

The openness to the idea of remote/distributed/teleworking, or however you want to call not working from “the office”, was the result of realising this reality. For those who hadn’t opened up to the idea of their employees working from home, the global pandemic forced them to.

As I have previously shared, I started Boundless after I had experienced considerable challenges in managing employment for geographically distributed teams. While at the time, the employees in my previous company going remote was unplanned, it was in no way as sudden or all-encompassing as in the time of a global pandemic.

If leaders do not make their companies fit for a world where a remote and distributed way of work is far more prevalent, they risk becoming less competitive employers. A change in how we operate is needed, which goes beyond opening up the recruitment pool and advertising remote-friendly jobs. To attract and retain people, we have to rethink the workforce experience in a way that addresses people’s needs. Let’s explore a vision of what leaders are going to have to do in terms of global employment, and how.

Getting the best candidates into your pipeline and convincing them to come and work with you is all about ensuring that you are perceived as a great company to work for.

More and more, the definition of a great company is that of an organisation that stands behind the values it puts on posters around the office. There is nothing more off-putting than a company saying one thing but doing another. You do not have to search much to find stories of companies filled with hypocrisy and how much that has tarnished their brand.

Communication, Respect, Integrity, and Excellence were the values Enron plastered on its walls.

Recognising why these are important to employees and providing them as part of the employee experience requires leading with empathy.

How should all that affect how you lead your organisation and how you build your employer brand? 

Providing legal, secure, and stable global employment for all your employees, regardless of where they are based, has to sit alongside offering genuine flexibility about when and where they do their work. I know that providing employment is more difficult for geographically distributed teams than for co-located teams. Still, I am here to tell you that global employment solutions are now more accessible than ever. Before we get to that, let’s look at your options for hiring someone in a different jurisdiction.

In a global employment environment, companies adopting a remote-first model often expands beyond domestic hiring into new jurisdictions. While at-will employment is common in places like the United States, it does not apply in most international contexts. As remote hiring increases, businesses must navigate international hiring challenges where termination rules, employee protections, and compliance requirements vary significantly by country.

For distributed teams, this means employment practices must adapt to local laws rather than relying on a single domestic framework, making compliant global employment a critical part of any remote hiring strategy.

Contracting is a legitimate workforce model when the classification is genuine. Most companies will, at one time or another, use fixed-term contracts for specific projects such as creating an inbound marketing strategy, process improvements, fundraising readiness preparation, and similar time-boxed engagements. For such projects, there usually is no permanent role in the company, and most governments will look at that and say, “Yes, that’s a legitimate contractor.”

The problem isn’t contracting itself; it’s using contractor agreements to avoid employment obligations for workers who are functionally employees. Every government employment agency and tax authority has slightly different criteria for what qualifies as a contract role and where someone should be classified as an employee, but broadly, the following are the key measures that they’ll look at:

• Does this person work full-time for your company?
• Is your company this person’s only client?
• Do they earn their primary income from your company?
• Do you, or the management at your company, direct their work?
• Do they use company equipment and infrastructure to produce work for you (laptop, company email account, regular participation at internal meetings)?

If the answer to all or most of these questions is yes, then the local government, employment authorities, and tax authorities will say this person must be classified as an employee. The general rule of thumb is: if someone looks like an employee and sounds like an employee, then they are an employee.

Many governments have begun intensifying enforcement against worker misclassification, including remote and cross‑border workers. We have seen or heard of enforcement actions in countries such as the UK, Spain, Germany, Canada, and others, and we believe this trend will continue.

Correct classification also matters at funding or exit. Investors expect compliant workforce structures: employees hired through an EOR, and genuinely independent contractors managed via an AOR, not misclassification. Despite global remote work, employment remains local, fragmented across jurisdictions, and full-time workers must follow the regulations where they operate.

Adhering to stringent government regulations is only part of the reason why companies need to seek a better way to manage their international workforce. We see seeking to compliantly engage international workers as an excellent opportunity to be a great employer by:

• Nurturing a great culture in your organisation where all team members, whether employees or contractors, are engaged compliantly and treated fairly, rather than building a two-tier system where some workers feel like second-class citizens
• Providing stability and security to your international workers. With an uncertain present and future, your international workers need the protection of local employment regulations as well as the aid of local social support, which are usually only available when the individual has been contributing to the local tax system.
• Improving your retention rates by fulfilling what are now recognised workforce needs and desires
• Adding value to your employer brand, ensuring your company is in a position to compete for the best candidates against other companies that are offering secure, compliant engagement

Accessing distributed talent compliantly is now more achievable than before. The solution for employment is a global employment platform that combines EOR infrastructure with easy-to-use technology. Together with experienced teams in global employment, this enables companies to operate their international workforce from a single point.

The EOR model provides access to local employment infrastructure, while the platform manages HR compliance, payroll, and tax filings on behalf of the company. When both infrastructure and technology are owned and operated by the same provider, it ensures compliant employment, reduces operational risk, and removes administrative overhead.

On the contractor side, an AOR addresses compliance for independent engagements, handling classification assessments, locally compliant contracts, insurance, and payments. While EOR enables compliant employment, AOR ensures contractor relationships are structured correctly. Together, they provide a complete framework for managing a distributed workforce.

This is the vision behind Boundless: to simplify global workforce management and make it easier for companies to access global talent. Built on deep expertise in global payroll, international People Ops, employment, and contractor compliance, the platform is designed to support compliant workforce expansion at scale.