G-P puts people to work in a new country inside a week, with no entity needed. When a client outgrows that arrangement, we set up the entity and run the payroll, tax and HR work behind it. Same relationship throughout, so nothing has to restart halfway.
To put someone to work, before any entity exists
Countries we do entity, payroll, HR and tax work in
Supplier, from the first hire to the owned entity
Hiring fast and owning an entity are two different jobs.
G-P does the first one. Its employment platform gets people hired and paid in a new country within days, with no entity in place. We do the second: entity formation, permanent establishment risk, tax compliance and HR consulting, in the same countries.
Normally a client reaches the seam between those two jobs and has to go and find a second supplier. That is where continuity breaks and compliance gaps open. Under this arrangement they stay where they are, and the entity work picks up from the hiring that came before it.
Three places this usually goes wrong.
Each one is solvable on its own. The difficulty is that a single supplier rarely covers all three.
Hiring before there is an entity
A client needs someone working in a country next month, and registering an entity takes longer than that. Get the interim arrangement wrong and they pick up local compliance problems and a permanent establishment tax exposure they did not budget for.
Outgrowing EOR and having to move
Headcount, tenure and spend all climb, and at some point an owned entity costs less than staying on EOR. Making that move usually means a new supplier, a fresh onboarding, and a window where nobody is quite sure who owns compliance.
One supplier per problem
EOR from one firm, entity setup from another, HR from a third. Nobody owns the whole picture, and the client ends up spending their time coordinating suppliers instead of running the expansion.
What a client actually gets
A route out of EOR that already exists
The path from EOR to an owned entity is worked out in advance, so arriving at that point is a step in the plan rather than a supplier change. No re-onboarding, and no second procurement exercise.
One contract at the start
The client signs with HSP. G-P runs the payroll and holds the employer liability behind that. One relationship from day one.
Neither side is doing this as a sideline
G-P runs global employment at scale. We run entity formation, tax and HR consulting. Neither of us is stretching into work we do not do every day.
Who does what
The client contracts with us
One agreement and one point of accountability, covering the interim hiring and whatever the entity position turns into later.
G-P employs and pays the people
Their platform handles hiring and payroll in the target country, and they hold the Employer of Record liability for as long as that lasts.
We both watch the tax position
As headcount, tenure and spend build up in a country, the two teams look at permanent establishment triggers together and work out when the entity should happen.
We stand up the entity when the numbers say so
Formation, tax structuring, HR consulting, and benefits matched closely enough that employees notice the payroll change and not much else.
When to put a client on this
It fits four situations in particular.
- The client is going into a country where they have no entity, and they want someone working there sooner than a registration can be completed.
- The client is already on EOR somewhere, and headcount, tenure or spend has reached the point where their own entity would cost less.
- The client has people in enough countries that permanent establishment has turned into a real tax question rather than a theoretical one.
- The client needs HR work alongside the payroll: employment contracts, policy, handbooks, local benefits.
The questions that come up.
Does the client have to end up with an entity?
No. Plenty of countries never justify one, and staying on EOR indefinitely is a perfectly good answer. The reason we keep reviewing it is so the client knows when the maths changes, not so they get moved for the sake of it.
How long does the entity part take?
It varies by country more than almost anything else we do, from a few weeks to several months. That is the whole reason the hiring runs on EOR first rather than waiting for a registration.
Who does the client come to when something goes wrong?
Us. You raise it with our team and we deal with whatever needs dealing with on the G-P side. The client is not left working out which of the two to chase.
What happens to the employees at the switch?
They move onto the client's own payroll. Benefits are matched closely enough that for most people it amounts to a change of payslip and nothing more.
Bring us a client who is stuck between the two.
If you have a client who needs people working somewhere next month, or one who has been on EOR long enough that it is starting to cost more than it saves, that is the conversation to open with.
Peter Kadison
Managing Director, Strategic Partnerships
pkadison@hsp.com
James Clancy
VP, Sales
jclancy@hsp.com