Remote’s Global Workforce Report 2025 has revealed that international hiring is accelerating among Singapore companies. HR leaders in Singapore report that international roles accounted for 49% of new hires over the past six months, and they expect this trend to continue with 40% of new roles being based abroad in the next six months.
Challenges to hiring globally
Amidst the rise in hiring globally in the country, HR leaders face challenges that hinder them from confidently hiring abroad, such as unclear or conflicting local regulations (79%), inability to pay or onboard talent compliantly (29%), and compliance challenges (66%), with the average cost of each compliance incident amounting to over US$36,200.
Managing global teams
According to the report, 24% of respondents in Singapore cite managing multiple disconnected HR tools and platforms as one of the most common challenges in managing a global workforce. This challenge underscores the necessity of a single, integrated solution that can handle multiple tasks, such as global payroll, compliance risk reduction, and streamlined hiring processes. Over half (51%) of HR leaders are actively seeking to replace their HR platform with such a solution.
“The first wave of technology in HR made it possible to hire globally. The next wave is transforming how those teams are managed. Beyond supporting HR operations as standard, AI is becoming the operating system for how companies run a global workforce. The most successful HR teams are already leaning on integrated payroll and responsive, adaptable HRIS as the foundation for handling global payroll, compliance and reporting,” said Job van der Voort, CEO & co-founder at Remote.
Remote’s study is based on an international survey with more than 3,000 business leaders of companies across 10 countries, including 250 from Singapore.
