isolved and Remote Partner to Bring Global Hiring Infrastructure to SMBs

Small and midsized businesses (SMBs) can now access global hiring capabilities previously reserved for large enterprises, thanks to a partnership between human capital management provider isolved and global employment platform Remote. The collaboration, detailed in a recent episode of the podcast You Should Know hosted by William Tincup of WRKdefined, unites isolved's payroll and HR infrastructure with Remote's Employer of Record (EOR), contractor management, and global payroll services.

Barry Gauch, Executive Vice President at isolved, and Pim Altena, GM for Remote Embedded and VP of Partnerships at Remote, explained how the integration addresses a growing demand among SMBs to hire talent without geographic constraints. Gauch noted that isolved's customer base increasingly sought cross-border hiring solutions, prompting a formal request for proposal process that narrowed ten providers to five before selecting Remote. "Our customer demand for global hiring had picked up," Gauch said, adding that isolved chose partnership over building in-house because "it's not our key competency, but we know we needed to deliver it."

The partnership offers three hiring modalities within a single platform: EOR for fast market entry, contractor management for flexible engagements, and global payroll for established international teams. Altena highlighted how the API-first model differentiates Remote from competitors, enabling seamless integration with isolved's system. He recalled his own experience as a Remote customer trying to hire an Italian candidate he could not legally employ, underscoring the problem the partnership solves: "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."

The timing of the alliance aligns with the acceleration of skill-based hiring, as businesses prioritize talent over location. Tincup noted that the U.S. State Department recognizes 192 countries where American companies can operate, each with distinct federal, state, and municipal payroll rules. Altena pointed to extreme variations in labor law, such as pre-employment medical exams being mandatory in some jurisdictions and forbidden in others, and highlighted the high employee-protection regimes in France and Germany. Gauch emphasized that affordability and white-glove customer treatment were non-negotiable criteria for isolved, and previewed how the integration with ApplicantPro, now fully folded into isolved, will excite talent acquisition teams and staffing-company resellers seeking a unified platform.

The episode, titled You Should Know, is available now wherever podcasts are heard. The conversation offers insights into how SMBs can compete for global talent without the complexity of establishing legal entities in multiple countries.