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.