A partnership between isolved and Remote is giving small and midsized businesses (SMBs) the infrastructure to hire workers across borders, a capability previously reserved for large enterprises. The alliance, detailed in a recent episode of the podcast You Should Know, combines isolved's human capital management platform with Remote's global employment tools to collapse legal, payroll, and compliance barriers.
Barry Gauch, Executive Vice President at isolved, and Pim Altena, GM for Remote Embedded and VP of Partnerships at Remote, explained how the integration works. Remote offers three hiring modalities within a single platform: Employer of Record (EOR) for fast market entry, contractor management for flexible engagements, and global payroll for established international teams. Gauch said isolved chose Remote after a formal RFP process that narrowed ten providers to five, driven by rising customer demand for cross-border hiring. 'Our customer demand for global hiring had picked up,' Gauch said, adding that isolved opted for partnership over building its own solution because 'it's not our key competency, but we know we needed to deliver it.'
Altena framed the opportunity in personal terms, recalling his experience as a Remote customer trying to hire an Italian candidate he could not legally employ. 'You're hiring people for skills, right? Like, that's what you should do, but you're actually constraining yourself often unconsciously by just the compliance capabilities, the legal entity footprint that you already have as a business,' he said. The discussion highlighted the complexity of global employment, noting that the State Department recognizes 192 countries with which U.S. companies can do business, each with its own federal, state, and municipal payroll rules. Altena pointed to extreme divergence in labor law, citing that pre-employment medical exams are mandatory in some jurisdictions and forbidden in others, and highlighting France and Germany's high employee-protection regimes.
Gauch emphasized that affordability and white-glove customer treatment were non-negotiable criteria. He also previewed how the integration with ApplicantPro, now fully folded into isolved, will benefit talent acquisition teams and staffing-company resellers seeking a unified platform. The partnership reflects a broader trend toward skill-based hiring, where companies prioritize candidates' abilities over geographic location. By removing compliance hurdles, isolved and Remote aim to level the playing field for SMBs competing for global talent.
