Mary P.
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Verified by
Saskia H.
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Last updated:
August 23, 2024
— User Reviews
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There’s no question that remote work dominates today’s corporate world. For employers, this means the talent pool has grown as they expand their recruitment efforts to an international level. But this comes at a cost. As each new employee brings their country’s unique employment laws and stipulations with them, the reality of hiring globally can create an admin-induced headache. Fear not – Oyster has found the solution. Much to the relief of HR personnel, the service carries out the tiresome tasks of researching, understanding, and implementing each country’s tax and employment laws, and local benefits. This global HR software helps you hire and onboard contractors for $29 per contractor per month and full-time employees from $399 per person per month. Essentially, Oyster HR minimizes the stress and time associated with global onboarding, allowing your company to easily access the highest quality and most suitable candidates.
Oyster’s colorful website is certainly eye-catching, though somewhat busy. Fortunately, everything is straightforward and logical once signed up. While the company provides many free global HR tools and resources, the most useful is the employment cost calculator. It breaks down the cost of hiring someone (including taxes, contributions, and Oyster’s fee) by only requiring the person’s country of residence and gross annual salary. In addition, the platform has an extensive collection of accessible guides, which profile each country’s employment rules and regulations. The best part is that all of this information is easy to find, easy to read, and completely free. Ultimately, this saves HR teams from wasting time getting lost in various countries’ government websites while researching local employment laws.
Despite offering several services in one platform, Oyster has ensured that the customer dashboard is clearly organized, with tabs categorizing features, such as team, benefits, and expenses. The aesthetically pleasing layout avoids any confusion and makes the hiring process – which is usually a source of frustration – to be quite satisfying.
There are many onboarding services out there, but few concentrate on international recruitment. Oyster acts as the middleman, communicating with both the employer and new team members, ensuring the process runs smoothly and efficiently. Furthermore, it takes on the complicated task of researching and interpreting numerous employment laws, removing the risk of the employer not meeting any legal requirements. You can sit back and relax in the knowledge that your legal and tax compliance, IP protection, liability insurance, and payroll is being handled.
With a team of specialists dedicated to managing onboarding, the whole process is quickly completed. Oyster estimates that it only takes ten days from the submission of a new employee’s information to all agreements being signed. But the support doesn’t stop there, as, once hired, the team provides on-hand assistance via email, live chat, and Zoom calls. Unfortunately, there isn’t a mobile or desktop app, but the browser version works seamlessly on smartphones.
Despite mainly focusing on companies and their HR teams, Oyster also strives to support job seekers, remote workers, and people who just seek to upgrade their corporate skills. The Oyster Academy provides interactive online courses designed to enhance proficiency in skills like writing job applications, preparing for interviews, and creating a company culture for distributed work environments. These courses are neatly presented and even award a certificate on completion, helping people boost that all-important LinkedIn profile. Lots of these courses are free and can be completed within a day.
Oyster’s dedication to ethical causes is yet another attractive feature of the company. The ‘Oyster for Refugees’ scheme allows companies to hire refugees either for free or at a discounted rate. Working alongside the refugee talent scout, Niya.ai, Oyster aids employers in finding refugees who are either already highly qualified, or who will excel with the help of the free courses provided by the platform.
A quick scan through the website shows how the company has got its priorities right. The ‘Oyster for Impact’ program pledges to support nonprofits and B Corporations (companies with a high social and environmental sustainability score), by providing them with discounts on products and free access to educational resources. In short, the company is clearly impact-driven and seeks to help others.
Oyster’s primary focus is onboarding but its integrations cater to all other HR needs, too. With Quickbooks and Xero covering accounting, BambooHR and Greenhouse handling recruitment, and HiBob collecting and organizing your staff data, all the necessary criteria for a successful and efficient business is covered. Additionally, the integration process is utterly intuitive, as there is a section on the dashboard that lays out the user’s options. Plus, it’s possible to connect to third-party applications with just a few clicks. Although there aren’t thousands of applications to choose from, Oyster has chosen quality over quantity, with its available services being useful and reliable.
Oyster offers free access to its courses, invoice and expense management, and global HR tools. However, a paid account is necessary to get help hiring people. The Lite plan is built for hiring contractors, costing $29 per person per month. Meanwhile, the Business plan also provides assistance in employing full-time employees from over 130 countries. The price starts at $399 per employee per month for the 28 countries with emerging economies and $699 per person per month for the remaining countries. There’s also the Enterprise plan, which customizes its pricing depending on companies’ requirements and brings to the table custom global compliance support and a dedicated hiring success team. Whether you choose Business or Enterprise, Oyster offers a discount of 5% after hiring five full-time hires and 10% after acquiring ten.
Alternatively, nonprofits and B Corporations are able to onboard their first full-time employee for free and will receive a further 30% discount for the next ten hires. Any company can hire up to ten refugees for free, as long as they’re from countries in which Oyster has direct entities. Requesting a free demo to see how it all works without committing is also possible.
Oyster’s customer service comes in a variety of forms. For anyone seeking clarification, the site has a short but informative video detailing its key services and features. This is helpful, so it’s a shame there aren’t other tutorials of this kind. Nevertheless, the help center has an abundant and frequently updated FAQ page from the perspectives of companies, full-time employees, and contractors. Alongside these concise answers, there are detailed articles with step-by-step guides. However, if the information you’re after is nowhere to be found, the amusingly named chatbot ‘Pearl’ answers basic questions or connects you with an expert. Alternatively, emailing Oyster or messaging it on Facebook or Instagram is also an option. The helpful support team is available from Monday to Friday.
Coming in at a monthly cost of $29 per contractor and $399 per team member, Oyster may seem like an expensive solution. However, it’s worth every penny for companies that are serious about expanding their recruitment efforts across borders. Oyster recognizes the roadblocks that employers inevitably face and provides tools to combat them. The cost calculator, benefits advisor, employee misclassification analyzer, and talent marketplace are anything but a gimmick. By providing many services in one, Oyster keeps things streamlined. Working alongside its integrated applications, the service effectively handles the hiring, onboarding, and engagement of employees across the globe. This results in you gaining more time to focus on what actually matters: working with your new team. But before grabbing your wallet, make sure to get a hands-on experience through the free demo available.
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