Lind, Dan, so great to have both of you here. Bitpanda and Clara are both high-growth companies operating across multiple markets. Lind, as Bitpanda's CHRO, and Dan, as the leader of global payroll and benefits at Clara, you each bring a unique perspective on managing a global workforce. But before we dive in, can you give us a quick snapshot of your global footprint? How many countries, employees, and different worker types you're managing today?
First and foremost, we've got about 700 different folks across over 20 different jurisdictions. And we've got everybody, right? So, we've got direct employees, we've got EOR folks, we've got folks by contractor of record, we've got consultants. You name it, we have it.
Yeah. And for us, very similar to Lind, you name it, we have it. So, global payroll, EOR, PEO, contractor of record, consultant, and we're in 26 geographies and we have around 3,400 employees. And we're so proud to be both of you guys as customers and close partners.
Well, let's dive in a little bit. Lind, from an HR perspective, what are the biggest challenges in building and managing a global workforce in a company like Bitpanda?
I think it's the overall complexity, right? Because every time you break into a new jurisdiction, I mean, if we think about what that looks like, the compliance, the employment laws, everything that that requires, right? Being able to navigate that. How do you pay people, right? That brings on its new thing. There's new taxes, there's new way of processing, there's new vendors, there's all of it, right? And same when you go with your benefits admin. But all of that together really is about, and I think it's hard for organizations to get this right, it's about creating a unified culture. So no matter where and how we employ people, you want it to feel like, hey, you're part of this team, right? You're part of this experience with us. Doesn't matter if you're an EOR or a direct employee. And I think that the endgame is really to make sure that we build that employee experience, right? To make sure that that is at the top and the best and that the ultimate experience for people. And that's hard to get right.
And that makes a lot of sense. I think you guys have built one of the most amazing cultures in Europe. So, we're excited to see you scale. So, shifting a little bit to Clara, then you guys operate in 26 different countries with thousands of employees. What were some of the biggest challenges your team faced in managing payroll and benefits at this scale?
Yeah, I think so many companies are going to resonate with this no matter what their size is, and it's going to be multiple vendors with lots of manual work, and that is a real challenge. Everyone is trying to solve that challenge, which I think right now, or if they are not trying to solve it right now, they're thinking of trying to solve it in the future, which is really good. Now, some companies would prefer to have multiple vendors, they think that it helps with their BCP or business continuity planning. But that can be a real challenge if we want to try to understand exactly how much our workforce costs and where people are across so many different markets. And in terms of benefits, we also had the same type of issues. Multiple vendors and multiple countries, and one of the things that we should focus on is the process, then the people, and the systems and technology. So that's really key. The idea is if every process is completely different across all the different geographies, it makes it very difficult to make sure that you can automate. And then if you've got so many different processes, then leveraging people to do it is going to be a challenge, and being able to get the right technology to solve for all of those different parts, it also becomes a really big challenge.
What you said also resonates quite heavily with me, which is every company is either thinking or will be thinking about how do they reshape their infrastructure. What really led you guys to rethink about how you manage global payroll and benefits?
We wanted to focus on just two things. It would be visibility and one supplier goals. For us, it's so good and so key to have visibility of everything very quickly. And that is so important, but also one supplier goals. It's so good to be able to say even if there isn't an issue or something comes up, you know exactly where to go to, you know what their processes are, and that can be solved a lot faster than if you had to scramble across multiple different places in order to try to find the same solution. It also means that we can see enhancements and we can see progress within that one vendor, and we can also then recommend changes that we think would be better and have a vendor who will be able to look at that and move forward with it.
I just want to dabble on one small thing you said before: people and process. So can you tell us a little bit of how you were running payroll and benefits before, how are you doing it now, and where are you seeing it going in the future?
Yeah, I think once again, everyone in the payroll space, probably HR space and finance space, are definitely going to know this, and that is taking one source of truth that you've got probably in some form of HR or HIS system and having to manually copy that into multiple different templates or multiple different spreadsheets that are completely different because you've got completely different vendors. And that just causes so much confusion. You copy one thing wrong and you could have an issue, and that was just one thing that we were always getting stuck with. So we wanted to try and solve for that. And also where you've got manual intervention, it creates more room for errors, and you know when finance then get the information, it could then be wrong just because of a manual copy and paste error, and that is not really what any company should be doing or focusing on. Where I see this going in the future is definitely automation. Focus in on a really good systems automation whilst also leveraging AI if possible from vendors and partners that can help, and that will make all the processes a lot smoother for the people because you then have the right technology.
Lind, coming back to you. Bitpanda is one of Europe's fastest-growing fintech unicorns. It's actually amazing to see you guys in so many football stadiums recently too. I'm always a little proud when I see your logo. And with that rapid growth, what are some of the challenges of scaling HR across multiple regions? Talk us through some of the strategic choices you've made and what does it look like today at Bitpanda?
