Compliance in 28 countries without a single lawyer
What Employer of Record actually covers — and the three traps to avoid before you sign anything.
Most teams discover Employer of Record (EOR) when they want to hire one person in a country where they don't have an entity. They learn the magic word — "EOR" — and assume that's it. Then six months later they hit one of three traps that nobody warned them about.
"EOR is genuinely transformative — it's how you go global without a legal team. But it's a tool, not autopilot. Knowing where it ends helps you know where to apply judgment."
Trap one: misclassifying a contractor as a contractor when local law would treat them as an employee. EOR fixes this for the workers you put on it — but if you've also been paying separate "contractors" in that country, you've got hidden exposure. Olamee surfaces this in our compliance review automatically.
Trap two: assuming benefits parity. "Standard" benefits in Brazil look very different from "standard" benefits in Singapore. EOR providers handle the legal floor, but your competitive offer needs to be calibrated per market. We've started shipping benchmark benefits per country to make this easier.
Trap three: equity. Granting RSUs or options cross-border has tax implications in the employee's country that are not the EOR's problem to solve. Get this wrong and you create a tax bomb for the employee, not you. Always loop in a tax advisor when granting equity to non-US team members.
EOR is genuinely transformative — it's how you go global without a legal team. But it's a tool, not autopilot. Knowing where it ends helps you know where to apply judgment.
Priya has built people ops at three remote-first startups across four continents.
