Nearshoring Hiring: A Practical Guide For Building Teams Close To Home

Expanding your team internationally can unlock incredible growth opportunities, but it often comes with a fair share of headaches. Many companies find themselves torn between the high cost of onshore hiring and the operational challenges of managing fully remote, offshore teams spread across time zones. Misaligned working hours, communication barriers, and long feedback loops can slow down projects that need speed and agility.

This is where nearshoring offers a more balanced path forward. By hiring teams in nearby countries, companies can still enjoy cost savings while maintaining closer collaboration, faster decision-making, and smoother workflows.

In Southeast Asia, nearshoring has become a strategic solution for organizations seeking skilled professionals without the friction of distance. This guide breaks down how nearshoring works and how you can build efficient, high-performing teams, close to home.

What Nearshoring Hiring Means

To understand nearshoring, it’s important to first see it as a middle ground between local hiring and fully offshore hiring. It gives companies the chance to access cost-effective talent while keeping collaboration practical and efficient.

Nearshoring in recruitment is the practice of building distributed teams in neighboring or regional countries so working hours overlap, collaboration feels natural, and onboarding stays swift. Instead of relying on far-away markets, businesses in Southeast Asia can strategically hire closer to home, gaining both convenience and efficiency.

For example, companies in Singapore often tap into nearby markets such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines. By building teams in these locations, businesses enjoy real-time collaboration, cultural familiarity, and smoother day-to-day workflows.

Nearshore vs Offshore vs Onshore

Before deciding which hiring model is right for your business, it helps to know how nearshoring compares with other common approaches. Each option comes with trade-offs in cost, collaboration, and compliance.

• Onshore means hiring in your own country. This gives you the most control and easiest compliance, but it’s usually the most expensive option because talent costs are higher in mature markets.
• Nearshore means hiring in nearby countries with similar time zones. It balances affordability with collaboration because your teams can still work in overlapping hours and meet in person when necessary.
• Offshore means hiring in farther regions with larger time differences. While this option often provides the lowest costs, it also creates challenges with communication delays and cultural differences that require more coordination.

Nearshoring is increasingly seen as a balanced model for cost, efficiency, and team productivity—offering more collaboration than offshore and more affordability than onshore.

Nearshoring Benefits

Many business leaders are turning to nearshoring because it creates an attractive mix of savings and operational efficiency. With partners like Glints TalentHub, companies gain the ability to recruit across Southeast Asia quickly and compliantly.

1. Time-zone overlap for live collaboration and faster feedback

When teams work within overlapping time zones, collaboration becomes much more fluid. Meetings, brainstorming sessions, and project reviews can happen in real time—no need to wait overnight for replies or approvals. This allows ideas to evolve faster and feedback loops to shorten, which ultimately accelerates decision-making and keeps projects moving without unnecessary downtime.

2. Lower Total Cost of Hiring Compared to Onshore Markets

Southeast Asia continues to be an attractive nearshoring destination thanks to its balance of quality and cost. Companies can access highly skilled professionals at more competitive rates than in markets like Singapore or Hong Kong. According to regional talent reports, businesses can save up to 40–50% on hiring costs while maintaining strong technical and professional standards. These savings can then be reinvested into innovation, team growth, or product development.

3. Cultural and Language Proximity That Reduces Miscommunication

Collaboration is smoother when teams share a common understanding of language and work culture. Many professionals in Southeast Asia are fluent in English and familiar with similar workplace values—teamwork, respect, and adaptability. This cultural and linguistic alignment minimizes misunderstandings and helps build stronger, more trusting relationships across borders.

4. Easier travel for summits, training, or client visits

Proximity is a major advantage when it comes to face-to-face interaction. Teams within the region are often just a short flight—or even a ferry ride—away. This makes it easier and more affordable to organize workshops, leadership summits, or on-site training. Frequent in-person engagement strengthens relationships and enhances collaboration, especially for teams managing complex projects.

5. Stronger Sprint Cadence and Handoff Quality for Product and Ops

Aligned working hours mean smoother coordination between teams, especially in fast-moving functions like product development or operations. Tasks can be handed off seamlessly without waiting for the next time zone to “wake up.” This improves sprint rhythm, ensures consistent progress, and minimizes bottlenecks that are common in fully offshore models.

When Nearshoring Makes The Most Sense

Nearshoring is not just for one type of business, it works best when roles require active, ongoing collaboration.

• Product and engineering teams needing daily stand-ups and pair work
  Software development and tech innovation move quickly. Having engineers in the same time zone ensures daily check-ins run smoothly, bugs are fixed faster, and collaboration tools are used more effectively.
• Finance, payroll, and customer operations requiring real-time coverage
  Functions like payroll or customer support often deal with time-sensitive issues. With nearshore teams, responses can happen during the same business day, keeping employees and clients satisfied.
• Marketing, sales, and support teams coordinating campaigns, demos, or escalations in-region
  Campaigns work best when markets are understood at a local level. Nearshore teams bring insights from nearby countries, while still being able to sync instantly with HQ to adapt strategies and deliver real-time support.

Risks to Plan For

While nearshoring provides many advantages, it also requires preparation to avoid common pitfalls. Companies that succeed with this model are those that proactively manage the risks.

• Legal and HR compliance across borders
  Every country in Southeast Asia has unique labor laws, payroll regulations, and employee protections. Without proper guidance, companies risk non-compliance fines or disputes. For example, see our insights on minimum wage in Southeast Asia countries.
• Pay equity and benchmarking across currencies
  It’s not enough to just offer “cheaper salaries.” Compensation needs to be benchmarked fairly to attract and retain talent while aligning with local standards and currencies.
• Security posture for remote devices and data
  Nearshore teams still work remotely, which makes data and system security a top priority. Companies must ensure device management, secure logins, and access policies are consistent across borders.
• Manager readiness for distributed team leadership
  Not every manager has experience leading cross-border teams. Training leaders in communication, cultural sensitivity, and distributed workflows is critical for long-term success.

How EOR Supports Nearshoring Hiring

Setting up a local entity in every nearby country is time-consuming and costly. This is where Employer of Record (EOR) solutions make nearshoring far simpler.

An Employer of Record in Southeast Asia acts as the legal employer on paper, handling contracts, payroll, tax withholdings, and statutory benefits. This allows companies to hire quickly without establishing a costly local entity. With EOR, you can move from job offer to compliant onboarding in days rather than months, freeing your managers to focus on productivity instead of paperwork.

Nearshoring in Southeast Asia: Why it Works

Southeast Asia has become one of the most attractive regions for nearshoring, thanks to its diverse workforce, cost efficiency, and cultural compatibility. At Glints TalentHub, we’ve seen how companies leverage nearshoring to scale faster while staying compliant.

Let’s look at some real-world nearshoring cases in Southeast Asia:

• Singapore → Batam, Indonesia
  A tech company in Singapore builds a nearshore engineering team in Batam. With only a one-hour ferry ride between Batam and Singapore, leaders can meet their developers in person for workshops while keeping day-to-day operations online. This proximity makes communication easy while saving significantly on salary costs.
• Malaysia → Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
  A Malaysian startup scales its product team by hiring designers and developers in Vietnam. These professionals are highly skilled and bring creative expertise, while sharing the same time zone ensures fast collaboration on new product features.
• Hong Kong → Manila, Philippines
  A Hong Kong firm expands its customer support function in Manila, tapping into the Philippines’ reputation for strong English proficiency and customer service culture. Training trips are quick, and clients get better real-time coverage without the lag of offshore support.

For more context, explore our guide on key steps to successfully implement offshore hiring in Southeast Asia.

A simple Framework to Start Nearshoring with Glints TalentHub

For leaders ready to take the first step, whether you’re operating as a startup or a structured enterprise, here’s a practical framework to guide your nearshoring journey with Glints TalentHub.

1. Define the scope
   Clarify what roles you want to hire, the seniority level, English proficiency needed, and overlap hours expected. This makes it easier to find the right candidates from the start.
2. Choose the hiring model
   Decide if you want to hire directly through your entity or work with an EOR for faster, compliant onboarding. The latter saves months of setup time and reduces risk.
3. Calibrate compensation
   Use regional salary benchmarks and adjust for currency exchange to create competitive, fair packages. This also ensures consistency across teams.
4. Source and shortlist
   Leverage Glints’ curated Southeast Asia talent pools, structured interviews, and role-based skill tests to ensure you get quality candidates.
5. Run compliant onboarding
   Once you’ve found your hire, issue contracts, set up payroll, and provision devices in a fully compliant way. Using an EOR ensures no steps are missed.
6. Manage, develop, retain
   Set measurable goals, provide clear career paths, and run regular feedback cycles. Companies can also strengthen engagement by applying structured practices like those in our article on turning peer review feedback into business advantage.

👉 Explore more tailored insights:
• For Startups — get agile, scalable strategies
• For Enterprises — see how structured scale and compliance align

Cost, quality, and speed: what to expect

The value of nearshoring comes from balancing three things: saving money, maintaining quality, and moving fast.

• Cost: Companies reduce hiring and employment costs compared to onshore, often saving up to 40–50% while still offering fair local salaries.
• Quality: Southeast Asia is home to a large pool of educated, experienced professionals across tech, operations, finance, and customer service. Employers don’t need to compromise on skill levels.
• Speed: With the help of an EOR, hiring cycles shrink from months to days, and employees can start delivering value almost immediately. For an extra layer of protection, see our guide on PEO insurance in Southeast Asia.

To compare your options, explore how Employer of Record services help you hire across borders.

This article is brought to you by Glints TalentHub. Leading companies are actively building their borderless teams in Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and beyond. However, the prospect of going borderless can be daunting due to complex regulations and cultural ambiguities. With Glints TalentHub, you’ll have a dedicated team of in-market legal, HR, and talent experts by your side at every step of the way.

Glints TalentHub offers an end-to-end, tech-enabled talent solution that encompasses talent acquisition, EOR, and talent development. We empower businesses to leverage the strengths of regional talent efficiently to build high-performing, cost-efficient teams.

Schedule a no-obligation consultation with our experts to receive a tailored proposal today!