Technically HR exclusive: Oyster releases new automated tool for global hiring decisions

On Thursday, global employment and compliance platform Oyster announced the debut of a new technology to help global employers make better decisions around workforce planning.

SAGE, a “system to automate global employment,” powers Oyster Intelligence, a tool that provides country-specific insights on pay, benefits, and other compliance requirements in real time. With Oyster Intelligence, employers can make workforce and employment decisions with the most up-to-date information across jurisdictions.

“As [customers] use our platforms, they are guided into making the wisest decision when it comes to organizing the workforce,” said Matteo Bordin, Oyster’s VP of product.

Bordin said the new SAGE technology allows Oyster Intelligence to provide users with insights to consider when making a hiring decision in one country or another.

“Like when you start hiring someone in France,” he said. “[Customers] have—while hiring—all the information about how much vacation...what are the implications of choosing a senior person versus a younger person in terms of the probation period, the vacation days, the termination costs, the severance package.”

SAGE’s database can automatically update Oyster Intelligence with changes to guidance when regulations change to deliver accurate information to clients as they navigate global hiring.

”The law can change in the Netherlands tomorrow,” Oyster’s COO Mark Frein told HR Brew. “The world is constantly changing in terms of global employment, so you need a really fast intake pipeline for all the stuff that’s happening around global employment and a really fast way to process that into the platform.” For Oyster, that pipeline is fueled by SAGE.

The news follows a November announcement from Oyster about launching an API and integration experiences to expand reach “through other players in the HR tech ecosystem,” according to Bordin.

“It’s really having customers get to the value that we can provide without having to make a gigantic investment by changing the complete HR tech stack,” he said of that news.

Zoom out. Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, companies have widened their recruitment nets, expanding internationally to widen the applicant pool and potentially lower costs. But with the expanded employee base comes compliance challenges employers may not be ready to face.

“A lot of people during the distributed workforce push during Covid went out, just got people on their payroll as a contractor,” Frein said. “But in many countries, that contractor relationship isn’t compliant, that over time can become a real, real problem for a company.”

Oyster and products like it can offer companies insights to help navigate the employment landscape for countries with which they may not be familiar.

“What’s happened over the last few years is that [for] companies all over the word, [it’s] immediately become possible for them to hire everyone. All the barriers disappear magically,” Bordin said. “Now, that is a world of opportunity, but it’s also a world of unknowns.”