Silversea: Rebuilding a China team after switching EOR

Silversea spent two years with a local Chinese EOR before switching to RemotePeople. The result: smoother payroll, a responsive account team and the recruitment and office support its Shanghai hires actually needed.

Sectors Shipping · Containers · Global Logistics

Challenge Fix a broken China EOR setup — payroll, recruitment, account management — and rebuild the Shanghai team.

Location

Spain

Industry

Shipping

Company size

30+

Founding Year

2016

With RemotePeople since

2021

Content

6 minutes read

show

Silversea’s first attempt at EOR didn’t scale

Silversea, a leading provider of shipping containers worldwide, needed a presence in Asia. From their head office in Spain, they hired their first employee in Shanghai in 2019 using a local Employer of Record (not RemotePeople), where they stayed for just over 2 years.

Hiring employees with RemotePeople was a night-and-day experience. Suddenly, the payroll was smooth, the account manager was responsive, and the additional services (like recruitment and office space) gave our team members the flexibility they needed to be successful.

Ana Mont’ Alverne Global People Manager at Silversea.

Why provider choice matters when hiring in China

Silversea was planning a major expansion for their China office (and elsewhere) and needed a partner with a proven global hiring record to help them achieve their goals. They decided to hire a Global People Manager at HQ who saw the need to change the EOR provider to support this mission.

Above everything else, Silversea values the satisfaction of their team: With employee experience in mind, Silversea began searching for a better alternative who could accurately and efficiently provide the quality of service they were looking for, and with a human touch. That’s when they discovered RemotePeople.

Beyond payroll: RemotePeople’s recruiting support in China

RemotePeople is an EOR – but since its beginning has provided a full suite of professional HR services, including executive-search recruitment. For hiring their second employee in China, they relied on RemotePeople’s professional China-based recruitment team to get the job done.

Silversea’s HR lead had 7 years’ recruitment experience before her role at Silversea, so she knew exactly how the process should go:

The speed and quality of RemotePeople’s recruitment team was impressive. We identified and onboarded our new team member much sooner than expected, and the process was smooth. RemotePeople really took care of everything. After this experience, I knew we could trust RemotePeople with all aspects of our hiring project.

Ana Mont’ Alverne Global People Manager at Silversea.

After RemotePeople recruited their employee, he joined RemotePeople’s downtown Shanghai office where he received a warm welcome and a desk next to his colleagues.

From 2 to 5 employees with more to come

After the second employee was onboarded, Silversea decided they could begin to scale their operations with RemotePeople as a trusted partner.

Over the next 6 months, they hired 3 more team members in the Shanghai office, with several more hires planned through the next year in China alone.

Silversea will also seek to hire outside of China & Spain – and for them, RemotePeople is a clear choice of partner in any location they seek to hire without a subsidiary. They know they can count on RemotePeople to make employment compliant, the payroll smooth, and their employees feel at home.

Silversea’s favorite features

Silversea has many positive things to say about RemotePeople’s service.

For the RemotePeople platform, Silversea is pleased with its transparency and how easy it is to provide expense reimbursements and commissions to their employees:

“RemotePeople provided all relevant information about Chinese labor law – and the platform itself is super friendly to use” says Ana Mont’Alverne.

And if there are any payroll queries, the platform will show an itemized list for each deduction, allowing for an unparalleled level of transparency.

For the service itself, Silversea identified two areas where RemotePeople really stood out: Dedicated account managers: Account managers at RemotePeople serve as the main point of contact for clients. Account managers are there to help the employee with any inquiries they have and make the process smooth for both them and for the client. Silversea appreciates the fact that the account managers are local and therefore understand the hiring culture, but also the fact that they work for a global company and can bring that international perspective. This dynamic means Silversea feels comfortable asking questions surrounding work culture in China (for example, when they want to send gifts or surprises to employees). Account managers also form deep relationships with the client employees in-country, which leads to…

Employee care: Silversea is a company that cares deeply about their employees. They needed a partner that shares this perspective, and they found that with RemotePeople. That’s why RemotePeople invests so heavily in its global hubs, including office space and meeting rooms where client-employees can arrange meetings. Silversea will often receive photos from their employees in China of office events, gifts provided at holidays, or the amazing views from the 33F Shanghai office with a complete overview of downtown. As Silversea said, “Employees who send photos like this are happy employees!”

How Silversea chose RemotePeople over their previous provider

Silversea feels like they made the right choice to switch providers. If someone is considering partnering with RemotePeople, Silversea would offer the following advice:

We would warmly recommend RemotePeople to any company needing a global hiring partner. Quick responses to our queries, stellar recruitment support, and an overall excellent level of service are the RemotePeople touchstones. If you need a fast, compliant, international hire, give RemotePeople a try!

Ana Mont’Alverne Global People Manager at Silversea

Frequently Asked Questions

What should I look for in an EOR provider?

The best Employer of Record (EOR) providers offer the following:

A modern, intuitive platform to manage employee leave, expenses, and payroll.
Add-on services like international recruitment, visa assistance, and international office space are optional for companies that need an extra edge.
Truly global coverage. That means if you want to hire in Spain, Canada, China, and Vietnam this week, you can. And you should have the added benefit of paying all employee salaries through one invoice.
Genuine local knowledge. A good EOR will have people based in the country you’re expanding to, and their legal team will be well-versed and well-experienced in the law.