Oyster Review for Global Employment and Payroll

Oyster

$

599

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Oyster HR is a global employment and payroll platform that works as a strategic partner for global expansion. It enables businesses to hire, manage, and pay a distributed workforce in 180+ countries by handling the nuances of payroll, benefits, and compliance with the help of expert support.

Launched in 2019, this US-based company has its distributed team spread in 60+ countries. It is ideal for any company, including SMBs and enterprises, that wants to have international talents in their team. Oyster HR’s built-in compliance and data security ensure smooth navigation of the complexities of international employment with confidence.

Are you planning to get Oyster EOR solution for your company? In that case, it will be wise to go through the features and find out if these are enough to fulfill your requirements. Read my Oyster HR review to find out if it is worth investing in for your global hiring and payroll needs.

Features

• Hire and pay global talents as EOR and contractors.
• Multi-country payroll in 28+ countries.
• Convert contractors into full-timers.
• Offer country-specific benefits and equity.
• Talent mobility support with relocation and visa.

Pros

• Free account creation and feature exploration.
• No minimum global candidate is required.
• 100% legal-reviewed compliant agreements.
• Annual subscription benefits are unavailable for contractors.
• Discounts for nonprofits and refugees.

Cons

• Refundable security deposit for engagement initiation.
• Accepts payments only in USD, EUR, and GBP.

How Does Oyster Work?

Oyster HR streamlines global hiring by acting as an Employer of Record (EOR), handling payroll, and ensuring compliance through a unified platform. It simplifies international employment by managing complex local regulations and payroll intricacies. Whether you are kickstarting your global employment journey or looking for a better platform to manage your international team, the transition is easy.

Step 1: You can sign up for a free Oyster account to explore the platform and try some tools for free, such as the Employment Cost Calculator.

Step 2: When you submit the name of a new hire on the platform, a virtual hiring assistant will immediately guide you through local compliance.

Step 3: Invite your contractor to create an account on Oyster. Once they do it, let them review and sign the contract to complete their onboarding.

6 Main Oyster Solutions

Oyster HR offers the following products that you can use to expand your business globally by hiring and managing international talents.

1. Employer of Record

Employer of Record (EOR) is the most prominent feature of Oyster. It simplifies global hiring by handling the complexities of compliance, payroll, and benefits across more than 130 countries. The solution eliminates the need for businesses to establish local entities, thereby reducing legal and financial risks associated with international employment.

Oyster has an employee cost calculator tool, as shown below, that helps you estimate the cost of hiring employees from any country. It breaks down the cost so you can make the most profitable decision for your company.

As a company opts for this EOR service, it can leverage localized industry knowledge and expert support to effortlessly hire, pay, and reward the distributed teams. The platform generates legally reviewed compliant agreements, facilitates onboarding in 48 hours, and runs global payroll in over 120 currencies. Beyond just EOR services, Oyster acts as a centralized platform for managing global teams by handling onboarding, time off, expense tracking, benefits, and contracts. 

2. Hire International Contractors

Managing international contractors doesn’t have to be a headache. Oyster HR streamlines the process of hiring contractors across more than 180 countries, so you can focus on growth, not paperwork. It enables compliant global contractor hiring through automated onboarding processes, ensuring a seamless experience for both the company and the contractor.

Users can generate compliant, country-specific contracts in minutes, catering to freelance, pay-as-you-go, and project-based talent. Oyster facilitates payments in over 120+ currencies with a reported accuracy of over 99% so that you can say goodbye to payment errors and delays regardless of the payment structure.

Its centralized dashboard reduces the administrative burden of handling tax forms, payroll expenses, and reports while managing invoices, expenses, and contract generation. Furthermore, Oyster provides protection against misclassification up to USD $500,000, mitigating the risk of incorrect contractor classification. Additionally, it automates identity verification and contract signing processes during contractor hiring.

3. Run Global Payroll

Managing payroll across multiple countries is a significant challenge for global businesses. That’s why Oyster HR streamlines multi-country payroll processing for businesses in 28+ countries. It consolidates payroll management into a single, intuitive platform, removing the hassle of managing separate, often incompatible, payroll solutions.

Its multi-currency support for payments allows you to pay your global team members like locals, improving employee satisfaction and simplifying your financial operations. The software lets you see the upcoming payroll for EOR and contractors separately.

By ensuring compliance with country-specific regulations, it frees you from the burden of navigating complex international tax laws. Oyster’s gross-to-net reporting offers a clear overview of employee costs across all entities, simplifying financial management. It also ensures minimum manual data entry with complete accuracy and scalable workflows by providing integration with HRIS and expense management software.

4. Convert Contractors to Employees

Oyster users don’t have to look for another platform if they want to convert their contractors to full-time employees. Oyster streamlines the complex process of transitioning international talent by letting you efficiently assess and mitigate worker misclassification risks, a crucial step to avoid potential legal fines and penalties. It offers you access to expert guidance from People Ops and legal teams, ensuring compliance with local regulations.

You can manage the entire transition process within a single platform, simplifying coordination and alignment with all the stakeholders. Oyster offers tools to analyze legal risks and compare salary costs for contractors versus employees, facilitating data-driven decisions. During the conversion, you can provide competitive perks, including local currency payments, health insurance, and benefits, to retain valuable talent. This proactive approach not only ensures compliance and minimizes risk but also directly supports your business growth.

5. Talent Mobility

Managing international talent can be complex, especially when it comes to visas. Oyster HR simplifies the process by providing comprehensive visa sponsorship support across 60+ countries. It addresses the common challenges faced by global teams, such as securing visas for promising candidates or facilitating internal team relocations. Oyster automates key steps and provides expert guidance, ensuring compliance with local regulations. This means your candidates avoid the time-consuming task of independently researching visa options, eligibility, and associated costs.

The process begins with an introductory call between the employee and their dedicated Oyster Account Manager. Following this, the Oyster team conducts an eligibility check to outline the most suitable visa options. It provides personalized guidance throughout, validating the candidate’s right to work and managing the application. This includes discussing various visa options, handling paperwork, and submitting applications on their behalf. Essentially, Oyster removes the complexities of international employment, allowing you to efficiently manage your global workforce.

6. Employee Rewards and Recognition

As a part of its Total Rewards solution, Oyster’s employee rewards and recognition feature empowers you to attract and retain global talents. Its Salary Insights Tool leverages real-world data to provide low, mid, and high salary figures for specific roles across various locations. Thus, you can make a competitive and equitable offer to the employees and address existing pay gaps. 

Furthermore, Oyster offers pre-created, localized benefits packages, ranging from statutory to best-in-class, providing comprehensive benefits. Its Equity Assessment Tool provides guidance on compliant equity offerings in over 80 countries, allowing you to skip the complexities of global equity distribution. It supports localized salary insights, equity, and benefits tailored for 180+ countries, ensuring compliance and competitiveness. Essentially, you can access self-serve tools and subject-matter experts for informed decision-making, aligning with budgets and employee needs. Hence, you can foster a more engaged and satisfied global workforce.

How Does Oyster Handle Security and IP Protection?

Oyster prioritizes security and IP protection through a multi-faceted approach. It complies with global standards, including GDPR and the EU-US Data Protection Framework. Oyster is certified by SOC II Compliance, Data, and Breach Lock security monitoring. Its legal team reviews local laws to ensure that IP Assignment Agreements are tailored to that country. As a result, all IP rights are owned by or transferred to their customers to the fullest extent that country-specific confidentiality intellectual property agreement (CIPA) allows.

Can Small Business Use Oyster Payroll?

Yes, small businesses can use Oyster Payroll. Its global payroll plan costs only $25/month/employee, making it highly suitable for small businesses that are looking for automated payroll processing.

What is Oyster Direct+?

Oyster Direct+ is a comprehensive global employment infrastructure from the house of Oyster. It enables businesses to scale internationally by providing access to talents from 180+ countries through owned entities and vetted partners. Its proficient legal team ensures legal and tax compliance by answering specific questions as quickly as four days.

Direct+ offers 12x liability coverage per employee for up to $1 million USD and guarantees ownership of available IP rights. It allows payments in 140+ currencies with localized benefits. Moreover, it streamlines the hiring process with built-in automation features to complete the process from within 24 hours to under two weeks. Its customer support ensures quick resolution of problems within 72 hours. The platform includes free self-serve global HR tools and access to Oyster Academy training, helping you to manage and retain a global workforce successfully.

What is Oyster’s Global Employment Pass?

Global Employment Pass is an extensive resource package that assists individuals in navigating the world of remote work. Through Oyster Academy, it offers free remote work training courses to remote job seekers to help them gain essential skills to excel in remote environments. Additionally, it offers pitch materials so the candidates can effectively present themselves to potential employers. 

Global Employment Pass simplifies the job search process with a global job board featuring remote roles open to international applicants. Using its “Get Hired Anywhere” email template, candidates can encourage companies to utilize Oyster to hire global talents. It supports individuals throughout their remote job search through search automation, candidacy boosting, workshops, and training.

Oyster HR Integration

Oyster HR supports integration with HRIS systems and other business software, facilitating seamless data flow with the existing tech stack. It automates the HR management by eliminating manual data entry and administrative overhead. As it automates payroll, benefits, and compliances, you can be sure of the accuracy and efficiency of the processes.  

Using integrations, Oyster users can minimize the risk of human error and improve data integrity. Moreover, it increases business productivity by letting your team access and manage information and allowing you to make data-driven decisions.

• BambooHR: This integration keeps your company data consistent and up-to-date.
• Expensify: It lets you transfer expense data to your expense management tool automatically.
• Workday: It allows for data consistency and updated information.

My Favorite Oyster’s 4 Free Tools

Oyster offers some free tools essential for hiring and managing the best talents across the world with the best compensation. Here are my top picks for the free Oyster tools.

1. Benefits Advisor: In this tool, all I had to do was to enter the country where the concerned employee lives and the type of benefits (statutory, basic, locally competitive, best-in-class) I wanted to offer them.

2. Contractor vs Full-time Employee Analyzer: If you are unsure whether to hire someone as a contractor or full-time employee, this is the perfect tool for you. It asks you 10 questions about the relationship between you and the person you are about to hire to determine how you should hire them.

3. Equity Assessment: Using this tool, I was able to find out the tax implications of various equity schemes for a country. It categorizes equity options as preferred, possible, and discouraged to help you make the right decision.

4. Templates: Oyster also offers free email templates that you can use to draft an offer and rejection emails. It provides recruitment and interview templates, checklists, and playbooks so that you don’t miss out on any part of your recruitment plan.

Oyster HR Pricing

Oyster EOR costs you $599/employee/month, while the monthly charge of managing a contractor is $29. I like how it offers separate plans for the different services it provides, enabling you to pay only for what you want. 

Products	Best For	Key Features	Support	Starting Price (monthly)
EOR	Hiring full-time employees in 130+ countries	Hiring global talents, onboarding, payroll	Employment support	$599
Payroll	Accurately paying employees from one platform	Multi-country payment, payslip generation	Payroll specialists	$25
Contractor	Hire from 180+ countries compliantly	Onboarding, time-off management, expense management	NA	$29

Oyster HR Alternatives

Oyster HR competes with Remote, Deel, Velocity Global, and Omnipresent in the global employment and payroll space. Here’s a detailed comparison of Oyster HR with these alternatives to help you decide which software fits your needs:

Who Should Use Oyster HR?

Businesses looking to expand globally without creating local entities: Oyster HR is designed to streamline international hiring and employment, making it particularly valuable for businesses that want to expand their business without establishing local entities. This is ideal for businesses that want to test new markets or build remote teams in regions where they don’t have a physical presence, significantly reducing the administrative burden and accelerating their global expansion.

SMBs and enterprises managing distributed teams: Whether you are an SMB, fast-growing startup, or established enterprise, Oyster is suitable for you to manage distributed teams. It enables you to embrace remote work and global hiring by managing your international teams. 

Some of the prominent organizations, such as Kinsta, Zabal Media, Worldsensing, Lokalise, and Pacific Institute, use Oyster’s different services. Here are some of its case studies:

Lokalise: Lokalise diversified its team by hiring 142 team members from 45 countries.

Kinsta: Kinsta switched to Oyster from a legacy EOR for Contractor Conversion service and hired 20 team members from 5 countries using its EOR service.

Zabal Media: Using the Global Contractor service of Oyster, Zabal Media saves $120,000 a year while hiring and paying contractors.

Pacific Institute: Pacific Institute uses EOR and Contractor conversation services of Oyster. It was able to convert long-term contractors into full-time employees in four countries.

Who Shouldn’t Use Oyster?

Local-only businesses minimal global needs: If your operations are strictly confined to a single country, or if your international involvement is limited to occasional contractor payments, you don’t need Oyster’s comprehensive global employment features. Choosing simpler, localized payroll and HR solutions will be more cost-effective and appropriate for your needs.

Extremely budget-constrained organizations: Oyster is an expensive solution for hiring and managing EORs. For this reason, it is not the best option for companies with budgetary restrictions.

Business needs to run US payroll only: Oyster may not be the optimal choice if you want to run payroll for your US team only. While Oyster can handle US payroll as part of its global payroll offering, specialized US payroll providers like Papaya, Wave, or Deel would be a better choice for cost-effectiveness, tailored features for domestic payroll, and better integration with local tax and regulations.

FAQs About Oyster

Oyster HR Verdict

As a robust EOR solution, Oyster HR simplifies international employment for businesses. The strength of this platform lies in its comprehensiveness and ability to handle EOR, payroll, and compliance risk management effectively. Its ability to seamlessly manage the contractor conversion process makes it stand out in the crowd. While its global reach is commendable, its dependency on third-party vendors for some countries can cause potential delays or inconsistencies in service. 

Oyster received the Geekflare Editorial’s Choice Award for its compliant EOR and contractor services. Oyster HR is a valuable tool for any business with aggressive global expansion goals. I strongly recommend it for SMBs and startups seeking to easily hire globally.