The beyond borders approach to workplace compliance
As organisations push deeper into remote and borderless hiring, one challenge quickly rises to the top: how do you stay compliant in dozens – or even hundreds – of jurisdictions at once?
For Deel, a fully remote company with around 7,000 employees in 120 countries, compliance isn’t just a back‑office function – it’s a core business capability and a daily reality for every people leader.
“It’s really complicated,” said Alice Burks, director of people success at Deel. “If you’re a manager in a team and someone asks you ‘can I take Friday off?’, the question is very complicated despite sounding very simple depending on where they’re based.”
From ever‑changing labour laws to local benefits rules and state‑level quirks, Burks says global employers need to move beyond old playbooks and build compliance into the fabric of how they operate.
Acknowledging and accepting complexity is an important first step.
In Burks’ own team alone, she said around 10 different countries are represented. That translates to 10 different sets of statutory leave, mandatory benefits entitlements and local rules.
“You could feasibly have a team where you have 11 different answers to can I take a day off on Friday,” she added.
For leaders used to operating across only a handful of regions, that’s a radical shift. It requires a mindset shift. What used to be a simple, standard policy question now needs a structured, data‑driven answer that varies by location, worker type and contract.
Rather than trying to “standardise away” the complexity, Deel designs its people programs on first principles, asking: what experience do we want to create, and how do we do that in a compliant way for each jurisdiction?
Many organisations treat compliance as a static policy library, updated occasionally by legal or HR. That approach falls apart when you’re operating in dozens of markets where laws, thresholds and benefits can change overnight.
At Deel, keeping on top of this is literally part of the product for customers – and the internal people team relies on that same engine.
“We have a compliance knowledge hub that is serving up those relevant changes to customers… that might be a minimum wage change in one country, a benefits change in another, currency change in another,” said Burks.
“That information is fed into the internal people team as well. We have the benefit of working in a people tech company where that is possible.
For organisations that don’t have an in‑house tech platform, the principles still apply.
Burks urged companies to centralise regulatory intelligence in one accessible hub rather than scattering it across inboxes and spreadsheets.
This includes making sure updates are pushed to HR and payroll, not just passively stored.
Then tie legal changes directly to specific actions: what needs to change in contracts, payroll, leave systems, benefits documentation and manager guidance?
The goal is that when a law changes in Bulgaria or a new entitlement comes into effect in Brazil, it’s not a scramble – it’s a triggered, well‑rehearsed response.
Treat managers as frontline compliance partners
In a global, remote organisation, managers are often the first point of contact for compliance‑sensitive questions: leave, overtime, flexible work, local entitlements and more.
That’s why Deel puts heavy emphasis on “manager enablement” as a core compliance strategy.
The company has ensured that managers are aware of what varies by country and worker type – and where they can find authoritative answers.
This is achieved by giving them tools (dashboards, self‑service portals, workflows) so they don’t have to improvise or guess.
On top of that, training starts at onboarding and continues with the complexity of managing a remote, multi‑jurisdictional team emphasised throughout.
The aim isn’t to turn managers into mini‑lawyers, but to ensure they know enough to spot risk, ask the right questions and use the right channels – and not commit the company to something that contradicts local law.
Make communication and change management part of compliance
Even the most robust compliance framework fails if people don’t know what applies to them personally.
Deel takes a segmented communications approach: changes are pushed to team members based on “their country of employment, maybe their worker type, whatever it might be.”
As the company has scaled, it has also invested in dedicated internal communications capability. Burks says the first internal comms hire has been “a real unlock” for improving the flow of information – from leadership to managers to team members – across 120 countries.
“You can just look around you one day and be like, ‘oh, I’m in a silo’.”
Without office corridors, lunchrooms and informal chatter, global employers have to design how information flows.
Deel has taken some practical steps to address this. This includes leveling up all‑hands and product all‑hands meetings so major changes and strategic shifts are clearly explained.
It also worked on improving Slack channel governance, so employees know where to go for specific updates and don’t miss critical information in a sea of messages.
The building and upholding of repeatable cascades has also been crucial, so decisions and changes don’t die at the leadership level but are translated and reinforced by managers.
For compliance, that means policy changes don’t live only in a PDF – they show up in targeted messages, manager toolkits and live forums where employees can ask questions.
Balance global consistency with local nuance
The tension every global employer faces is how to balance a coherent, fair employee experience with wildly different local rules and norms.
On one side, you want structure: similar processes, comparable benefits philosophy, consistent expectations. On the other, you must respect local labour laws and cultural expectations – and avoid creating legal risk by applying “global” rules that conflict with domestic regulations.
Burks’ answer is to start with a clear set of values and a global employee experience – then adapt at the edges.
One example is time off and flexibility. Culturally, Deel leans heavily into autonomy and output over presenteeism, allowing employees to shape their hours around life commitments as long as they’re delivering. But the exact mechanics of leave – accrual, rollovers, entitlements – vary country by country and are codified accordingly.
Similarly, compliance around working hours and rest is managed through local rules, while the global expectation is that no one should be “on the pitch” 24 hours a day.
“The pitch is a 24 hour cycle. You're not on the pitch the whole time… You should be subbing off… What do you need to equip your team and stakeholders with so that they can keep the ball moving down the pitch while you are very reasonably having some sleep or dinner or time with your family or your hobbies,” Burks explained.
Use technology as your “office” and your control centre
In a world where teams rarely, if ever, share a physical location, your digital infrastructure becomes both your office and your compliance control centre.
Deel explicitly treats Slack as its office. This has the benefit of being able to track all records of approvals, decisions and policy clarifications.
Standardised workflows can also be embedded directly into the tools employees use every day.
Further, training, policy updates and FAQs can be distributed and pinned in the same environment where work happens.
The flip side is that the organisation must put thought into structure. Without clear channels, ownership and governance, critical compliance messaging risks being buried.
For companies expanding hiring across borders, the lesson from Deel is not that compliance is a specialist concern sitting apart from culture, flexibility and employee experience. It’s woven through all of them.
From the moment someone joins, they’re onboarded not only into the company’s values and ways of working, but into a system that quietly ensures their employment is legitimate, their benefits are correct and their rights are honoured – wherever they are in the world.
For employers eyeing global talent markets, Burks’ message is clear: if you want the benefits of a truly borderless workforce, you have to build a compliance model that’s just as global – and just as intentional – as your hiring strategy.
