How Lano enables Hygraph to hire & run payroll for their remote-first team

In order to realize their goal of building a compliant, globally-distributed team, the Hygraph team knew that it was not a viable option to open new entities in every country, and wanted to have a more flexible workforce that would scale naturally with the company. 

Another challenge was how to best handle the specific labour and tax regulations that each market had. It was implausible to expect the HR team to keep track of every change in regulation for every country and if there were any implications of these changes on their employees. 

Initially, Hygraph evaluated several options for Global Employment platforms. After evaluating other solutions that typically operate with their own entities, Hygraph was not satisfied with the initial service that they provided and was skeptical about how that relationship would grow in the future. They needed a trusted partner that could be the go-to contact for all topics around hiring and paying employees abroad and questions that naturally arise from those processes.

They wanted to provide a fair and consistent experience as an employee — offer the same or similar benefits to each employee. So it was essential that the Global Employment partner had a good overview of how the company approaches remote work regardless of the country. It was critical that the partner had access to deep knowledge on the country’s current regulations and had large amounts of experience operating in those spaces. 

Hygraph chose Lano’s Global Employment and Global Payroll solutions to help standardize and optimize the HR processes. They were convinced by the high standard of service and the country coverage in 170+ markets. Hygraph knew that it would not just be a one-time solution, but rather that they were building the foundations of a relationship for many years to come. 

“We are using Lano for our full-time contracts. For employees from different countries, Lano does the payroll. Lano also takes care of expense management and also makes sure that the employee benefit expenses are paid out to them. So everything related to payroll, benefits, payout in general is taken care of by Lano.”

– Eray Yalçındağ, VP of Operations

The global reach with Lano's partner network was a key reason why the team decided to use Lano. The local partners are experts in local laws and compliance, and have been well-vetted to ensure that they meet high-quality standards. For instance, within two weeks, the team was able to hire a new team member in the Philippines, a country where they previously did not have any experience. The Global Hiring Guides gave the team a comprehensive overview of what to expect from hiring someone in this new market but avoided the headaches around non-compliance.

“I got the quote within 48 hours; it was quite quick. This was also a very special case because we had only 10 days from the day when the candidate signed the contract until his first day of starting with us. It all went smoothly, thanks to Viktorija and Carolina’s help and thanks to Lano’s local partner network.”

– Gargi Mahapatra, People and Culture Lead 

With labour and tax regulations changing often, Lano ensures that Hygraph is kept up to date on any changes and provides clarity on how those changes to regulation could affect their employees, or not.

To help simplify processes around payment, expenses, and reimbursements, the team now uses the Global Payroll solution as well. It makes it simple to manage payslips for foreign employees, pay the employees, and have a simple overview of expenses in a single dashboard. Hygraph no longer has to spend large amounts of time manually running payroll for each employee in a different country but now can conduct this entire process from within Lano, saving the team time and headaches. On the platform, the Hygraph operations team can see which invoices have been requested, which have been approved by HR, and whether or not they have been paid out. Having all of this information in a single place helps ensure that the information is up to date that invoices are paid on time without back and forth needed between the departments.