Company B’s U.S. expansion followed a common trajectory, beginning with a small marketing and sales office supported by MI’s International Business Incubator program. When the company committed to building a manufacturing facility in another state, the operational complexity grew exponentially. With construction came the need to hire a few key personnel, and as the project neared completion, Company B required critical support to staff the new facility and transition outsourced processes to its new, onsite HR team.
Problem
While the new HR Manager possessed deep expertise in established procedures, this was their first time building an entire HR infrastructure from the ground up. They also faced the additional challenge of managing a growing expatriate workforce and the intense pressure of being one of the first direct hires for the new facility. As a result, they struggled with the implementation work needed to go from 0 to 25 employees at the new facility in its first year of operations.
MI’s Solution
MI intervened to provide foundational HR infrastructure for Company B’s growth, first in the small office and again at the new plant. MI deployed its expertise to bridge critical gaps before the HR Manager was hired and then served as their strategic support when their workload exceeded capacity and assigned tasks veered outside their specialty.
Deep Dive
Building the Foundations: The IBI for the Marketing & Sales Office
Initially, the company engaged MI for our software implementation and training expertise. Their U.S. operation was still young—a marketing and sales office with basic needs for clerical work, order processing, accounting, and sales. After some introductory discussions, MI identified that their objectives would be best met by leveraging our International Business Incubator (IBI) program to accelerate their market entry and, happily, they agreed.
During this foundational phase, MI functioned as the company’s internal HR department for their U.S. subsidiary, while also assisting with initial order processing and project work. From an HR perspective, our responsibilities included payroll processing, office staff recruitment and training, and ensuring full regulatory compliance.
While this kind of remote oversight is sufficient for a small office, the expansion to a manufacturing facility demanded new processes, an on-site HR team, and robust systems designed to support a blue-collar workforce.
Initial Plant Staffing
The first order of business was to fill several key positions at the plant while it was still under construction. An expatriate was hired as the Technology & Facility Manager through a connection. Shortly after, MI provided strategic counsel, recommending the immediate hiring of an Operations Director. This was a crucial move designed to protect the President of the U.S. subsidiary from being mired in construction timelines, keeping him focused on revenue generation. The Operations Director MI recommended had direct experience establishing U.S. manufacturing for a foreign-owned company, and his nationality matched the parent company’s, ensuring a strong cultural bridge to headquarters.
Months later, MI urged forward planning. All stakeholders—from the Operations Director to MI to headquarters—agreed ADP Workforce Now was a Human Capital Management (HCM) solution robust enough to handle a projected headcount in the hundreds (by the end of the second year of the plant’s operations). Our advice was unequivocal: begin configuration three to four months before the first production hire. The parent company hesitated, preferring to wait for their newly recruited HR Manager, whose start date was still months away.
Expat Perks & Payroll—Translating the “Big Ask”
As the HR Manager came onboard, plans were underway to send additional key personnel from the parent company stateside for the first year or two of the plant’s operations to train the U.S. blue-collar workforce. This was the HR Manager’s first exposure to the complexities of what needed to be done when expats are hired, and as such, felt out of their element. MI manages expatriate moves all the time but there were several conditions that made this case a little unique, so it was completely understandable for them to need MI’s assistance.
Therefore, our priority was unglamorous but mission critical: serve as the U.S. strategic counterpart to the parent company’s home country HR consultant. Their team specialized in keeping expatriates compliant with home-country pension and tax law; our mandate was to ensure no U.S. HR regulations were violated and that no policies be construed as “special treatment”. This required painstaking execution. MI collected and cross-checked all necessary information, chasing down state registrations, re-filing or getting authorized certifications whenever so much as a middle initial didn’t match. In the world of cross-border compliance, what sounds like grunt work is actually high-stakes risk mitigation—a single keystroke can snowball into small inconsistencies that stop a relocation cold and send costs climbing on both sides of the Atlantic.
Furthermore, relocating an employee to another continent is a significant ask. Assignees arrive with no U.S. credit file, rendering them unable to lease an apartment, finance a car, or secure utilities without direct support. They also step into a healthcare system that bears little resemblance to the coverage they enjoy at home. To sweeten the request, the parent company had promised certain benefits. At home those benefits sit outside taxable income; in the United States they land squarely inside it. The first payroll models made the gap obvious: a promise of “take-home $1,000” required a U.S. gross of roughly $1,300 once taxes on every perk were factored in.
MI stepped in as translator—not of language, but of compensation culture. We walked the plant HR Manager and senior European HR management through U.S. payroll logic, line by line, demonstrating how housing and car allowances convert into taxable income and how that, in turn, affects the employee’s net and the company’s pension obligations back home. We then produced dual projections showing the U.S. gross-to-net calculation alongside the impact on the company’s home-country pension obligations. This gave stakeholders a clear, real-dollar understanding of what it would cost to honor each promise.
The next step required careful, direct communication with senior management in the U.S. and the parent company, to prepare them for conversations with the employees themselves. European compensation is discussed in net figures; U.S. requires discussion in gross figures due to varying personal tax situations. We explained this fundamental difference, presented the estimated take-home pay, and urged that each employee validate the numbers with their personal CPA for full transparency.
By setting expectations early—and backing them with transparent math—we turned what could have felt like a broken promise into a good-faith negotiation. Most packages were successfully recalibrated: some perks were reshaped, some gross pay was lifted, and all parties moved forward with a clear understanding of the numbers and confidence that the spirit of the original offer had been honored
From a Handful of Desks to Twenty-Five Badges
In addition to expat challenges, the operational focus also included staffing the plant with American hires. However, the consequences of delaying the HCM implementation now became unavoidable. By the time the assembly floor began filling with operators, the system was still in sandbox mode. The company’s HR Manager—excellent at recruiting, far less familiar with ADP’s back-end complexity—needed a crash course just to keep onboarding moving. MI stepped in to bridge the gap: working with ADP to finish mapping earnings codes, testing payroll calculations, and running stand-in payroll cycles so no employee missed a check.
ADP Workforce Now is a powerful platform, but it’s not plug-and-play. Every tax jurisdiction, benefit plan, and time-clock rule must be wired correctly to prevent cascading errors. A few software glitches on ADP’s side added more friction, and without a payroll specialist yet in seat, the learning curve was steep. When that specialist finally arrived, they could focus on pushing the project over the finish line because the heavy lift of the initial build-out was already complete.
In hindsight, the company recognized the hidden cost of a “we’ll do it later” strategy. Delaying implementation didn’t save money; it merely redirected the expense into overtime, manual reconciliations, and avoidable stress on a brand-new HR team. Starting early would have unlocked ADP’s recruiting and onboarding modules in time to lighten the HR Manager’s load instead of overwhelming them. MI’s hands-on support kept paydays smoother, but the lesson endures: you build the platform before you need it, not while the line is already running.
(Not So) Greater Expectations
All’s well that ends well, but honesty demands a look at the pressure points. The newly hired HR Manager was brought in for their core strength—recruiting and vetting skilled talent. Within weeks, their role greatly expanded. While wearing extra hats is standard in a start-up environment; piling on technical responsibilities without clear limits is not.
The parent company, focused on production deadlines, couldn’t feel the grind 7,000 kilometers away. MI, being much closer, could. We saw a gap widening between what had been promised—“build a recruiting pipeline”—and the reality on the HR Manager’s desk: recruiting for 25+ expected plant positions, reconciling payrolls, evaluating expat compensation packages, implementing a new HR platform, formalizing onboarding, setting up the HR department and plant administrative office, finalizing the company handbook, reviewing and implementing new benefit plans, fielding safety audits, and explaining U.S. labor law to three time zones of stakeholders. Left unchecked, that kind of mismatch can burn out good people.
MI served as the buffer. First, we mapped each responsibility back to the job description and flagged overload to leadership. Next, we carved out the repeated and technical tasks—ADP configuration, normal payroll processing, onboarding, and benefit-plan coordination—and executed ourselves or assisted the HR Manager in task completion until a dedicated payroll specialist arrived. Finally, we kept senior management in the loop with risk reports that included workload metrics and looming compliance deadlines.
The result? A realistic division of labor, an HR Manager who stayed motivated instead of discouraged, and zero HR or management turnover during the plant’s most fragile year. That’s the hidden ROI of having a partner who spots stress before it derails momentum—and acts before burn-out turns into resignation
Key Learnings
- Leverage Specialized Expertise: Bring in external HR experts for complex areas like expat compensation packages, paying into home country pension plans, and system implementations, especially when your internal team is new or stretched.
- Proactive HR Foundation is Crucial and Avoids “Hidden Costs”: Implement robust HR systems and infrastructure before rapid hiring begins. Delaying doesn’t save money; it shifts costs to inefficiencies, manual work, and potential compliance issues, proving early investment is more cost-effective.
- Protect Talent from Burnout: Actively monitor new hires’ workloads, redistribute tasks when necessary, and advocate for realistic expectations to prevent burnout and ensure retention.
Adopt these practices, and setting up your U.S. manufacturing facility, at least from an HR perspective, stops feeling like a gamble and starts operating like a plan!