How has Deel’s mission evolved since its inception, and how does it continue to stay relevant in an ever-changing global job market?
Our mission hasn’t changed since we launched in April 2019. We want to help millions of people work for the best companies in the world, no matter their location.
Today’s workforce wants more flexibility, and the internet has made the globalization of labor markets more accessible than ever. The way we work is going global, with businesses hiring people distributed all over the world. But until now, no HR platform has been able to handle everything, for everyone.
Deel is the all-in-one HR platform for global teams, simplifying every aspect of managing a global team, from culture and onboarding, to local payroll and compliance.
Can you share a success story of a company that transformed its international workforce management with Deel’s platform? (share any information / data you think is valuable for the reader to know)
SiteMinder expanded in global markets while staying compliant with Deel.
Headquartered in Sydney, Australia, SiteMinder is a global company with offices in Bangkok, Barcelona, Berlin, Dallas, Galway, London, and Manila. Today, the company generates more than 100 million reservations worth over US$35 billion in revenue for hotels each year. With employees working around the world and new offices in the works, ensuring compliance with local employment and tax laws was a constant challenge for SiteMinder. Because it’s a publicly-listed organization, the company is subject to stringent audit and regulatory compliance standards.
SiteMinder needed to comply with the employment and tax laws in a number of regional markets where it was expanding and its previous employer of record (EOR) lacked the streamlined efficiency they needed.
Since partnering with Deel, SiteMinder has seen new efficiencies in its employee hiring processes in international markets. This gives Bec Donnelly, Vice President of People at SiteMinder, confidence in her company’s ability to hire new people to scale in countries where it wants to expand.
“Deel is currently supporting us with around 52 employees spread out across around 11 countries at the moment,” said Donelly. “The benefits of Deel’s dashboard allows us to effectively manage these 52 people from one platform. It also allows greater efficiencies for our payroll teams globally.”
Using Deel’s dashboard, Bec now feels more assured that SiteMinder’s team members are being paid, employed, and serviced correctly within their own countries and time zones.
“Transitioning to Deel has saved us approx 2-3 days per month in administration time and costs. We used to have multiple people across the globe trying to coordinate and diagnose issues or run manual processes. The time saved includes multiple salaries and productivity time.”
“Deel provides in-country support with clear processes. This easy-to-use platform ensures we can streamline operations across our whole organization, from our talent acquisition team through to accounts payable, and understand when and who they need to engage with. It’s simplification in motion.”
“The benefits of Deel’s dashboard allows us to effectively manage these 52 employees from one platform. It also allows greater efficiencies for our payroll teams globally.”
How does Deel’s “Genuine Care” value translate into the platform’s features and customer support?
Deel has a set of core values that ensure team members, customers, and other stakeholders are treated fairly and well respected. We incorporate our values into our daily practices as well as a long term vision of how we empower a remote culture at Deel.
“Genuine Care” underlines how deeply we value our customers and understand the impact of our work, influencing how we interact with our customers when providing high-quality support and creating features that support over 15,000 customers around the world.
What do you believe sets Deel apart from other global HR platforms in terms of functionality and ease of use?
- Speed: Customers can onboard in seconds, enabling them to hire anywhere compliantly and get their team quickly set up with everything from contracts, equipment, and more.
- Pay everyone, fast: Customers can pay their employees and contractors in a few clicks, without unnecessary fees or hassle.
- All-in-One: Simplify HR for your whole team with the only global-first HR platform for any worker.
- Global Coverage: With over 100 countries and 120+ currencies supported, Deel has the breadth and depth companies need to go truly global.
- Compliance Expertise: Understanding and complying with local laws abroad is complex. Deel does it all for you, so you can be worry-free.
- Amazing customer service: get help from real humans at Deel, 24/7.
- We own our own infrastructure: Most competitors have less coverage or work with partners for their entity setup. Working with partners means they don’t have control of the end-to-end experience, from onboarding employees and running payroll to support and amendments. Deel owns a network of entities in 100+ countries, which means everything is handled through our own team and in-house payroll experts. We have the best coverage on the market through our own infrastructure, ensuring quality service, a direct point of contact for onboarding and support, and everything can be handled on-platform.
Can you explain how Deel’s thoughtful frugality approach benefits both the company and its customers?
“Thoughtful Frugality” ensures that as a company, we get more done with less, and are careful with our resources. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention, especially while being a relatively young company.
We apply the value of frugality to many areas of the business:
- Product development: Focusing on developing features that customers actually need and want, automating processes so customers can save time and resources.
- Sales: Making the acquisition process more cost-efficient by continuously testing, monitoring, analyzing and optimizing.
- Customer support: Automating some aspects of the customer support process, where necessary, to ease chat load and direct issues to specialist teams.
How does Deel help businesses overcome the challenges of managing remote teams and maintaining strong company culture across borders?
Tip 1: Communicate clear expectations of yourself and your team.
It’s important to create a company culture where everyone knows their responsibilities. As a manager, communicate that everyone should work independently and be allowed to make minor decisions in their own work area. It also helps to clearly state that answers can sometimes take a while.
Tip 2: Think globally – and act that way too
Because of the pandemic, working from home offices now works smoothly in many companies. This creates opportunities to hire employees across the Benelux region, Europe or even worldwide. Those who take advantage of the opportunities can attract the best talent to match their own company profile. However, this allows more intercultural misunderstandings to creep into everyday work. Be mindful of different time zones, work habits, and cultures – this is the only way to be open with employees.
Tip 3: Be honest with your employees and applicants.
Since its founding in 2019, Deel has experienced tremendous growth. This development means constant change. If someone isn’t open to change, can’t handle it, then he or she will not enjoy their experience. Clearly communicate the company’s values and terms. When you hire someone, you should already assess whether he or she will be successful – and happy – in your company’s environment.
Tip 4: If the decision to work remotely doesn’t come from the top, you’re better off staying in the office
Companies whose employees used to be 100 percent office-based and have switched to mobile working as a result of the pandemic should pay particular attention to their communications. Overall, such a decision should not only come from the top, but also be lived from the top. In mixed teams, don’t treat those in the home office or other locations as second class.
Tip 5: Schedule meetings to chat and without a work context
Slack is Deel’s main communication channel, but not everyone likes to interact via Slack, so find a new way to connect that appeals to your team. Every week, all Deel employees meet for an “all-hands meeting,” where leadership presents updates on products or ongoing business.
In addition, meet your team without a work context: this allows colleagues to build a relationship even though they are from different countries.
Tip 6: Despite remote work – bring all employees to one place to celebrate
People want to get together, so try and find a way to coordinate that – whether it’s broken down by team, country or region. Employees should have a place to celebrate shared successes, or work together in WeWork locations or off-site meetings / workshops. This strengthens employee motivation and loyalty to the company.
With the rise of remote work and distributed teams, how do you envision Deel’s role in shaping the future of work?
Today’s workforce is demanding more flexibility, and the internet has made the globalization of labor markets more accessible than ever. The way we work is going global, with businesses hiring people distributed all over the world.
But until now, no HR platform has been built with this workforce in mind, able to handle everything, for everyone. From using different payroll software for every region to different platforms for international teams, background checks and direct employees – some teams have to piece together 16 different tools to make it work. We want to create one HR solution that meets the evolving needs of global teams in a constantly changing world.
As Deel expands its reach and services, what are the company’s goals for further growth and innovation in the HR industry?
We’re growing incredibly fast as a company, recently surpassing $300M ARR, and we’re continuing to post MoM growth despite the macro economic environment. We have long had an extremely low burn rate, and as we’ve grown, we’ve begun to unlock larger enterprise customers – our pricing model is based on headcount, so that growth has been somewhat exponential. Most importantly – we are profitable on an EBITDA basis.
We are continuing to roll out new products and features, such as the recent launches of Global Payroll and Deel Immigration, and the creation of a new research and policy arm, the Deel Lab for Global Employment, as we continue our journey of building a generational company.
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