Topia’s global talent mobility platform addresses a new challenge of COVID-19 that is here to stay: how to manage tax exposure and payroll withholdings when employees can work from anywhere
SAN FRANCISCO – August 27, 2020 – Topia, the leading Global Talent Mobility platform, achieved record growth in Q2 driven by its tax compliance solutions for newly distributed workforces. After COVID-19 turned almost all workers into remote employees, Topia Compass (formerly known as Monaeo Enterprise Edition) saw massive demand from organizations struggling to monitor tax exposure and automate payroll withholdings. Companies using Topia Compass to track their newly remote workforces can now optimize tax obligations, save up to 25%+ per year in local tax obligations, and mitigate the risk of penalties and audits that target distributed workforces.
“COVID-19 has created a new reality for today’s workforce,” said Steve Black, Chief Strategy Officer at Topia. “Employees are creating tax exposure at a scale and velocity never seen before. Although this presents opportunities to reduce tax obligations, it also raises the risk of penalties and audits. We welcomed a record number of clients in Q2 with many aiming to manage this challenge of a distributed workforce.”
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, this new culture of distributed work is becoming permanent. Companies such as Facebook, Shopify, Square, and Twitter have announced that employees can work remotely for as long as they wish. More surprisingly, Siemens became the first major German company to introduce a permanent remote model. More than 140,000 employees in 43 countries are now welcome to work from anywhere two to three days per week.
Although COVID-19 put a freeze on most relocation and business travel, it created a new mobility challenge that Topia is uniquely capable of solving. As the pandemic shuttered workplaces around the globe, knowledge workers spread into home offices, vacation rentals, and childhood homes, creating tax exposure in countless new jurisdictions. Corporations that would normally base payroll withholdings on an employee’s office location could no longer do so. With Topia, companies are able to optimize tax obligations and mitigate risk of tax penalties.
Founded in 2010, Topia was recently named one of the fastest growing companies in the United Kingdom by transforming the way that enterprises manage global talent mobility including relocations, temporary assignments, business travel, and distributed workforces. The Topia suite, which includes Topia Plan, Manage, Pay, Go, and Compass, provides HR and mobility teams with an end-to-end solution for strategically placing employees and tapping into new talent marketplaces.
2020 has been a landmark year for Topia. In March, Topia acquired Monaeo, a technology leader for managing business travel compliance. In April, Topia closed $15 million in Series D funding, bringing its total raised to more than $100 million. And in June, Topia launched Topia One, the first cloud-based open platform that provides an integrated data standard across global talent mobility. Topia One enables Topia to benchmark global talent mobility data for the first time and facilitates fast integrations with other technology platforms.
“The new Topia One platform represents a real leap forward in the technology available to deliver global talent mobility,” said Myrna Delacruz–Barthel, Head of Global Mobility at Equinor. “We’re excited about the opportunity for the next generation of the Topia products; to support in providing better service to our business and align our mobility efforts to our global talent strategy.”
Topia has been busy expanding and enhancing their partnership ecosystem as well. In April, Topia received Approved Integration status with Workday. And just last month Topia was listed on the ADP marketplace for their Topia Compass Connector for ADP Workforce Now®. Topia now integrates with leading organizations such as BCD Travel, SAP Concur, Docusign, Fragomen and more.