The Challenge: The Complexity of Multistate Regulations was Hampering Growth
Understanding the nuances of a single state’s employment laws can be hard enough. But when a business expands and finds itself needing talent all over the U.S., the complexities of state-by-state employment regulations can be overwhelming.
A prominent private communications and arts institution found itself in just this situation. When it had made the strategic decision to expand its online master’s degree program, it quickly hired more than 30 remote employees across 17 states.
“It wasn’t long before reality came crashing down on us,” a college representative said. “We simply didn’t have the infrastructure and knowledge to handle compliant employment across multiple states. We had put ourselves in a precarious position, and we needed help.”
The Solution: Simplified Employment – Here, There, and Everywhere
The college selected IES to implement a nationwide Employer of Record (EOR) solution. “As we searched for a provider, one name kept coming up over and over: IES,” the representative added. “It was clear they had the experience, technology, and national coverage we needed.”
The solution cut through the intricacies of multistate employment, enabling the college to employ its newly expanded workforce compliantly through IES. But IES made sure the value didn’t end there. Knowing that the college sought to continue its remote hiring and geographic expansion, IES set up simplified engagement and onboarding workflows that made it easy to hire new remote staff anywhere in the U.S.
“It was critical that we didn’t limit ourselves just to the states where we already had added staff,” the representative said. “We couldn’t meet our strategic goals without being able to plug in new workers instantly from anywhere. And IES made sure we could.”
The Results: Unencumbered Growth and Guidance Toward Self-sufficiency
IES’s strong operational and strategic partnership led to several key successes:
Positioning for Expansion
IES’s Employer of Record solution ensured that the college could bring on new talent from every state in the U.S.
Accelerated Growth
With employment complexities no longer a concern, the college more than tripled its remote staff.
Strategic Advantage
The college leveraged its improved multistate hiring capabilities to refine its overall recruitment and retention strategies to more prominently cater to the remote workforce.
Consulting and Knowledge Transfer
With IES’s strategic guidance, the college readied itself over the course of three years to bring employment back in-house. It did so successfully in 2020.
“We appreciated that IES enabled us to hire out-of-state remote employees simply, without having to handle all the issues of interstate labor and employment laws,” the representative added. “But IES did more than that. IES was a critical strategic partner in our growth and the key reason why we were able to meet our goal of building a robust internal multistate employment function.”
