Of course, you’ll need to choose how you’ll administer your payroll, tax and pension payments, and read up on local employment laws to ensure you’re doing everything compliantly. You’ll then want to decide whether you’ll use a local or global compensation model (or some form of hybrid). 

But once you’re across the basics, you’ll likely start thinking about benefits including health insurance, equipment and any additional company offers. 

To help you along, we’ve compiled some of the main ways remote companies provide health care for their distributed teams. 

Add International Insurance

When you’re looking to provide health insurance for your employees, it makes sense that the first port of call should be some kind of global insurance solution. 

Instead of jumping into a whole new plan, it’s worth checking to see if your current insurance provider has an international package as that may be a simple addition to your existing policy. For example, Allianz has a five-tier global insurance offering which can cater to small businesses through to large international corporations. As well as short-term offerings which could be used for employees who’ve been sent abroad on assignment or are moving for a short period. 

Unfortunately, robust international offerings that provide a local perspective are hard to come by so you’ll likely have to switch companies or manage a few at once. 

AIG has been providing multinational insurance solutions for a while now. They have a program design tool that will guide you through local regulations, tax exposures, and coverage issues which could help design something compliant and in line with your company standards. 

The main drawback of using an international package is difficulty determining whether it’s a standard local offering. Without on-the-ground advice, it can be tricky creating a plan that is legally compliant while also offering what a local employee will expect as standard. 

Offer Remote Health Insurance 

If your insurance company doesn’t offer a package you’re interested in, but you still like the idea of providing company-wide coverage, you may be interested in remote health insurance companies such as SafetyWing. The insurance start-up was created to cater to the specific needs of globally distributed companies...read more

Shield GEO makes international employment simple. Our customers use Shield GEO to employ and payroll hundreds of workers in over fifty countries. Find out more.