Insights That Move Your Business Forward

Offshore hiring can reduce employment costs, but lower labor costs should not mean lower employment standards. The important question is whether companies are paying workers fairly for their skills and responsibilities while meeting the employment obligations of the country where they work.

When a US company hires an employee in the Philippines, the two countries may follow different holiday calendars. A US public holiday does not automatically give a Philippine-based employee a day off. Work on a Philippine holiday may add payroll costs; who bears them depends on the service agreement.

Hiring in the Philippines while managing an overseas team requires more than agreeing on working hours. Scheduling, holiday coverage, leave approvals, communication, and employment responsibilities must be clearly defined.

Hiring an offshore developer requires more than reviewing a résumé or trusting a provider's vetting process. You need to know whether the candidate can perform the actual work, communicate with your team, and solve problems independently.

If an offshore hire is underperforming, you manage the work, give feedback and raise the concern. The legal employer runs any discipline or termination. Under Montani's model, you tell Montani, and Montani runs the employment-side process.

A struggling hire is not automatically a bad hire. Before you decide, check three things: whether the role was defined clearly, whether the person was set up to succeed, and whether the original assessment pointed to a skills gap.

Assume someone on your remote team will leave, and build for it. Know who owns each stage of the hire's first year, write the work down so it can be handed over, and put pay reviews on a calendar.

Hold a remote team accountable by agreeing on clear expectations, measuring outcomes against them, and checking in on a regular schedule. Tracking activity tells you someone is busy. It does not tell you the work is done.

Manage a remote team by making the work visible, not the person. Set clear goals, ask for regular reports on output, and decide in advance who owns which decisions. Screen-watching tools add distrust and rarely fix the real gap, which is unclear communication.

Remote onboarding works best when you split it into two jobs: the employment setup and the work itself. Finish the paperwork and tools before day one.