Atlas, the global HRTech company that simplifies international hiring and payroll, has launched in South Africa as part of its global expansion plan.
Since 2022, Atlas has doubled its presence in the Middle East Africa (MEA) region and now plans to make South Africa its regional headquarters.
In September 2022, Atlas raised $200 million to support its global expansion and meet the strong demand for remote working solutions and cross-border workforce management. The company already has 62 customers in the MEA region, representing 10% of the workforce it manages on its clients’ behalf, and expects the number to grow by more than four times by the end of 2023.
Atlas says South Africa and the MEA region plays an important role in its growth plans, which is why it is now putting a local senior leadership team in place to lead this growth.
Founded in 2015 in Chicago, Atlas is a pioneer of Employer of Record (EOR) services. This provides flexible workforce solutions that help companies to expand across borders, onboard talent, manage compliance, and pay their global talent — without the need to establish a local operation.
Post-Covid, remote working has become a vital part of the new normal working environment globally. The pandemic also developed the trend of people moving to new cities or countries and working remotely outside of their home countries. This shift in workforce location has left companies grappling with the opportunity to hire and retain the best talent regardless of its location, and the challenge of creating a new organisational culture based on an ‘anywhere office’.
Atlas provides the support upon which global talent infrastructure rests. It allows companies to grow their team worldwide by providing the flexibility to expand without the need for a local entity, while ensuring that the company’s culture is maintained.
Atlas’s platform and solutions are designed to assume the responsibility of the legal employer to help manage the countless challenges of employing international teams.
“When I founded Atlas, I envisioned a future in which work and businesses would be borderless, and our mission is to enable companies to compete in this borderless world,” says Rick Hammell, CEO of Atlas.
“Through our solutions, African and Middle Eastern companies of any size can now expand globally without having to worry about the bricks and mortar of the past, accessing talent not just regionally but in every corner of the world and taking themselves from a local to a global business in a matter of days.”
Hammell says a key factor in Atlas’s expansion plans is about empowering local leadership to lead local growth strategies.
“We don’t want to be a typical US company with US professionals deciding what to do in other regions. We empower our local teams.”
To support its expansion in South Africa, Africa & Middle East, Atlas has appointed Nobuntu Ndlovu as its regional vice-president of marketing. She joins Lawrence Diamond, vice-president of business development.
Ndlovu says she expects strong demand from the startups/scale ups, technology and fintech companies seeking to expand abroad or looking to invest into MEA markets.
“The Atlas platform empowers companies to expand their workforce without the need to spend large amounts of executive time on the administrative aspects of setting up a local entity and the associated legal, HR and payroll compliance.”
There are also benefits for local South African organisations to become part of the Atlas global network and leverage off the solutions the platform provides.
“We foresee strong demand to support South African businesses as they expand into the MEA region and beyond. There is also an opportunity to support regional companies looking to capitalise on the services that digital nomads provide.”