Grow Your Pharma or Biotech Workforce Internationally — Without the Risk

Key takeaways

• Pharmaceutical and biotech companies often have a need to expand into new regions, but unique challenges with medical licensing, talent shortages, and security concerns can make compliant hiring difficult.
• Employer of record (EOR) is an innovative solution to many of these challenges, allowing companies to quickly hire in full compliance, even in countries where they don’t have an entity. 
• Safeguard Global is a leader in EOR and experienced in helping pharma and biotech organizations operate around the world, expand their business, and find cost savings. 

An accelerating landscape 

Thanks to AI-driven drug discovery, new therapies, and the expansion of clinical trials, pharmaceutical and biotech companies are under more pressure than ever before to accelerate innovation and expand globally. To compete, they need speed, access to specialized talent, and the ability to mitigate risk when entering new markets or scaling operations. Safeguard Global’s Employer of Record (EOR) solution allows them to achieve all three in nearly 190 countries. 

With an EOR solution, pharma and biotech companies can hire, onboard, and pay employees in regions where they don’t have a local entity. The EOR acts as the legal employer for the workers, ensuring full compliance with employment laws and administrating payroll that handles all necessary deductions and benefit contributions. EOR has been a game-changer for small and medium-sized organizations, allowing them to compete for talent in the same way as large corporations.

Solving industry challenges

Here‘s a closer look at how Safeguard Global EOR has helped our pharma and biotech customers.

Regulatory flux and compliance risk

Challenge: Constant shifts in local labor laws make it difficult to ensure compliance in every region.

Solution: Safeguard Global ensures compliant hiring around the world, reducing the risk of fines, trial delays, and reputational damage.

Shortages in specialized talent

Challenge: Competition for regulatory, CMC (chemistry, manufacturing, and controls), and trial management experts is intensifying, especially in emerging hubs like China and India.

Solution: Safeguard Global expands talent reach globally, enabling clients to hire where the expertise exists — even in challenging or highly regulated markets.

Patent cliffs driving pipeline pressure

Challenge: As patents expire and revenue declines, pharma companies must accelerate R&D and expand trials — creating demand for rapid, compliant hiring of specialized talent.

Solution: Safeguard Global’s EOR solution enables faster hiring for niche roles (clinical ops, regulatory, AI/data science) in key trial markets without having to wait for an entity to be set up.

EOR in action

Real-life case studies can help show the immense value of EOR. Here’s a great example: One of our customers, a midsized tech company that helps facilitate clinical trials, had participants it needed to serve in a remote region.

The challenge was that the trials were located outside of the company’s home continent, in a country where the laws were complex and unfamiliar to them. The company had to ensure that the workforce hired to support the trials was in full compliance with local laws, including laws around licensure.

As their EOR partner, Safeguard Global compliantly hired and employed workers. We also assisted in a restructure of their workforce footprint by helping them open an entity in India and shift engineering and customer service roles there.

Learn more

At Safeguard Global, we have deep expertise in helping pharma and biotech companies overcome workforce challenges in order to help them accelerate R&D and navigate compliance. Contact us today and learn how to turn global complexity into competitive advantage.