HR and Payroll platform Deel is working on an international path

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New people can easily be onboarded via the Deel platform and HR and payroll administration afterwards runs smoothly, and in line with local laws and regulations. To support customers even better, Deel recently added the AI ​​work assistant ‘Deel IQ’ to the platform. An ideal reason to talk to Dennis Valkema, General Manager Benelux at Deel.

A first question that arises is: how exactly Deel came into existence.

“The founders Alex Boaziz and Shuo Wang, who both studied at the renowned American university MIT, noticed that it was becoming increasingly difficult for companies to find the right people locally and that a growing number of companies were starting to look abroad for their recruitment. But recruiting people abroad is easier said than done. After all, there are often different rules and customs, which creates challenges. Opening a foreign branch may be a solution, but that is extremely expensive. Alex and Shuo wanted to find a solution to this. They built a platform based on the existing and legally validated concept of ’employer of record’. The platform initially allowed freelancers to be linked to companies, arrange contracts and facilitate payments. There was Deel!”

If we ask Dennis which explains the rapid growth of Deel, he cites 3 reasons:

• The corona pandemic was a catalyst: “Remote work was put on the map by this crisis and employers started to see the possibilities. The need for a platform that facilitates the management of a global team therefore grew.”

• The unique concept of Deel: “Unlike traditional social secretariats, which often rely on a local third party to facilitate payroll, Deel has its own local payroll teams and lawyers who support companies. This local knowledge and expertise is accessible via 1 platform that supports the preparation of contracts, the legal, compliance and payment aspects in line with local laws and regulations, regardless of where in the world these people live. The platform also provides links with various government services such as the VDAB, the Flemish and Walloon government.”

• Transparency and ease of use: “Self-service and maximum customer care are central to our product development. The Deel platform transparently makes available all the necessary information and tools needed to smoothly manage a global team of remote workers.” Dennis decided.

So how does a simple platform manage to perform very difficult tasks?

“Our product development team really focuses on ease of use. My grandmother should also be able to work with it, so to speak. In concrete terms, the platform will ask the new employee a number of basic questions during onboarding and the employer’s HR employee must also answer a number of technical questions such as the role the person will play, the agreed salary, the number of vacation days, and the like. . A contract is then drawn up on this basis. If local regulations require documents to be generated for the tax authorities, health insurance or pension, these will be delivered together with the contract. The data from the contract, which is immediately stored in the database, is then used to generate the necessary payment information for the employee of record or freelancer. Efficient use of the available data is therefore central.”

And thanks to the available data, you can offer extra added value?

“Yes, because we have different data within the platform that we can bring together and cross-reference, we can offer companies valuable insights that help them determine their policies. For example, we can very easily draw a report on the equal pay ratio in a certain region such as, say, Luxembourg. A company can then compare this ratio with their own situation and determine what the gap compared to the benchmark is and whether it is within the standards of the new EU legislation. If this is not the case, they clearly see that the policy needs to be adjusted.”

And do you rely on artificial intelligence to interpret all this data?

“Indeed, Chat GPT 4 has been integrated into our platform. Initially to help our own helpdesk, HR and legal employees to quickly provide answers to questions from our customers. But we quickly realized that it could also be of gold value to our customers. That is why we subsequently developed Part IQ.”

What exactly can Part IQ do?

“It gives companies access to reliable global HR information from our knowledge database, which is powered by more than 200 local HR experts and lawyers. Thanks to Deel IQ, for example, a company quickly gains insight into what needs to be adjusted in the event of changes in legislation or regulations. All they have to do is draw the necessary reports.”

How will Deel IQ and your platform develop further?

“I expect that the platform will become increasingly ‘proactive’, ‘predictive’ and even ‘prescriptive’ in the future. You will receive the message from Part IQ: ‘be careful, you are out of line there, know that you are not compliant, my advice is to adjust your policy in this way’. Ultimately, the choice is still up to humans to do something with this, because the computer will never make that choice. But the computer can provide advice based on the data that is available.”

What impact do you expect on HR, roughly within three to five years?

“Thanks to a platform like Deel, more and more administrative and payroll tasks will be automated. This will give HR employees more time to work with people and help them develop. This is often the reason why HR professionals chose the profession, but today in more than 80% of cases they do not do so because they have to spend too much time on administration, legislation and regulations. A tool like Deel will also ensure that HR gets a real ‘seat at the table’ in the boardroom. Today, HR often falls under a CFO or another executive who cannot always adequately answer the questions of shareholders who push for inclusion and equality. Thanks to a platform like Deel and the built-in artificial intelligence, insights can be quickly generated that help guide personnel policy.”

This article was written by one of our partners and the editors are not responsible for the content.