MyTutor · UK education technology · 1:1 and 3:1 online tutoring platform
Keep the engineer when she moves to Spain.
A senior engineer with 4 years of institutional knowledge tells her UK employer she is moving to Spain. The traditional answer is: either she resigns, or you set up a Spanish entity. Is there a third option that does not lose the person or build a foreign subsidiary?
MyTutor used Teamed EOR to convert the move into a retention. The engineer kept her role and her institutional knowledge; MyTutor avoided the cost and timeline of either hiring a replacement or forming a Spanish entity. The model worked so well it became infrastructure — MyTutor now runs a documented working-abroad policy that lets employees work up to 80 days per year abroad on top of permanent relocations.
- Senior engineer retained through relocation
- 1 (4 years tenure preserved)
- Replacement-hire cost avoided
- Full senior-engineer recruitment + onboarding cycle
- Local-entity setup required
- None — EOR only
- Working-abroad policy launched
- Up to 80 days/year abroad while remaining UK-employed
- Additional EOR hires (South Africa, pre-UK move)
- 1 (with grace-period onboarding while visa finalised)
- Retention outcome
- Senior engineer (4 years tenure) retained through international relocation
- Working-abroad policy
- Documented 80-days-per-year-abroad allowance, EOR-backed for moves that exceed it
- Pre-arrival onboarding
- Teamed enabled hire-before-arrival for a South Africa-based engineer who later moved to the UK
- Platform speed
- Same-platform onboarding compressed to under a working day per MyTutor's account
Facts confirmed by MyTutor. Last verified 2026-05-14.
Challenge
MyTutor — a UK-based platform connecting expert tutors with parents and students for 1:1 and 3:1 lessons — hit a retention crunch when a senior software engineer with four years of institutional knowledge announced she was moving to Spain. The default options were unpalatable: either lose the engineer and spend the cost of replacing senior platform expertise mid-growth, or build the legal and operational machinery (entity, payroll, statutory employer registration) of becoming a Spanish employer for one person. Neither was a defensible decision on either cost or speed. The platform was also feeling pressure from a broader pattern: post-pandemic, more employees wanted location flexibility, and "you can only work from the UK" was becoming a retention liability.
Approach
A peer firm in MyTutor's network referred them to Teamed. MyTutor engaged Teamed for an EOR hire in Spain — Teamed's Spanish entity became the engineer's legal employer while MyTutor remained the operational employer. The platform interface compressed setup ("if a task takes more than 5 clicks, you've lost us" — per MyTutor's own account). Encouraged by the model, MyTutor extended it: a subsequent South Africa-based engineer was hired pre-arrival in the UK, with Teamed handling employment-of-record in South Africa during the grace period while UK visa and travel arrangements finalised. The pattern hardened into infrastructure with a documented working-abroad policy allowing up to 80 days per year abroad — beyond which EOR converts the arrangement properly.
Result
MyTutor retained the senior engineer through the Spain move with no loss of institutional knowledge and no spin-up of a Spanish subsidiary. The working-abroad policy reframed location as an expressed-flexibility benefit rather than an unmanaged risk — employees can sample living in a new country (up to 80 days/year) while staying on UK contracts, and Teamed converts cleanly for genuine relocations beyond that. The hiring net broadened: roles that previously required UK presence can now be opened to candidates anywhere Teamed operates. Retention and talent-pool expansion compound — same EOR infrastructure, two distinct strategic outcomes.
Decision checklist
- Audit the past 12 months of resignations: how many cited location-flexibility constraints as the reason for leaving? That number is the size of your retention-via-EOR opportunity.
- Define the boundary between "working abroad temporarily" (stays on home contract) and "relocated" (converts to EOR in the new country). Most policies set the line at 60–90 days/year.
- Pilot the conversion path with one employee who has actually given notice or signalled intent to leave for a foreign move — not a hypothetical.
- Document the working-abroad policy publicly. It only retains employees if they know it exists before they accept a competing offer.
- Re-evaluate at 5+ employees in any single country: if the population is concentrating, the entity-vs-EOR conversation can start; if it remains scattered, EOR is the right shape indefinitely.
Frequently asked questions
What is the legal difference between "working abroad temporarily" and "relocating"?
Working temporarily abroad (typically up to 60–90 days/year) usually does not trigger a change in the employee's tax residence or the employer's permanent-establishment risk in the host country — the employee remains tax-resident in their home country and the employer has no fixed place of business abroad. Once the employee crosses the local tax-residency threshold (varies — 183 days is a common rule, but Spain, France, and Germany have stricter "centre of vital interests" tests that can trigger sooner), the analysis flips: the employee becomes tax-resident in the host country, social-security obligations may shift, and the employer can be exposed to permanent-establishment risk if the employee is performing core revenue-generating activity. At that point, the home-country contract no longer covers it; EOR in the host country (Teamed's structure) restores compliance.Why is hire-before-arrival useful?
It collapses the dead-time between offer-accept and first-day-of-work. A candidate based in South Africa who is moving to the UK can be onboarded under Teamed's South African EOR during the visa/travel period — receiving salary, benefits, and starting work immediately — and then converted to a UK contract on arrival. The alternative (unpaid wait for visa, candidate at risk of competing offers) typically costs 6–12 weeks of productivity per international hire and meaningfully raises the candidate-fall-through rate. The cost is one or two months of EOR fee; the upside is the candidate never goes cold.How does the working-abroad policy interact with tax residency?
The policy works because 80 days/year is well below the standard 183-day threshold that triggers tax residence in most countries. Provided the employee's primary residence, family, and economic ties remain in the UK, they remain UK tax-resident and pay UK PAYE; the employer remains the UK entity with no host-country PE exposure. The 80-day limit is the practical safety margin — it gives employees genuine flexibility while keeping the legal analysis simple. Employees who cross the line into "actually relocating" exit the working-abroad policy and convert to EOR in the new country.When would MyTutor switch from EOR to entity formation in Spain?
For Spanish professional-services salary levels, the EOR-to-entity crossover usually lands around 8–12 employees. Below that, the per-employee Teamed fee is materially cheaper than the all-in cost of running a Spanish SL (formation, registered office, gestoría/accountancy, NIE administration, payroll). MyTutor at one engineer is well inside the EOR window indefinitely; the question only re-opens if Spain becomes a deliberate operational hub with 8+ engineers, not a side-effect of individual relocations.