The HR Outsourcing Step Most Companies Skip, According to Dmitriy Misarenko

The Step That Gets Lost in the Rush to Scale

When a growing company decides to outsource HR functions in a new country, the usual checklist covers payroll, contracts, and cost per hire. One step rarely makes that list: checking how the outsourcing partner actually handles termination and dispute cases under local law, before a single employee is hired.

It sounds narrow. It is not. Termination rules, notice periods, and dispute procedures vary widely across European jurisdictions, and they are usually the part of the relationship nobody thinks about until something goes wrong.

Dmitriy Misarenko is an international business consultant who worked on HR outsourcing as part of two Poland-based consulting firms he co-founded, advising e-commerce and retail clients expanding across Europe. His view on this gap is straightforward: companies plan for hiring, and treat separation as an afterthought.

Why It Gets Skipped

Most founders are focused on speed. The goal is to get a team in place and start operating in a new market. Due diligence on an HR partner usually stops at price, service list, and a few reference calls.

Termination procedures feel like a problem for later. Nobody wants to think about letting people go before they have even hired anyone. That instinct is understandable, but it leaves a gap in exactly the part of the relationship with the most legal exposure.

There is also a structural reason this step gets missed. Payroll and onboarding are visible, recurring tasks, so they get tested early. Termination and dispute handling only show up when something fails, which means a weak process can sit unnoticed for a year or more.

What Happens When Nobody Checks

When a termination goes wrong under a jurisdiction's specific rules, the costs are rarely small. Severance disputes can mean extended notice pay, legal fees, and, in some countries, reinstatement claims. An HR outsourcing partner that handles payroll well but has thin experience with local labor disputes will not catch these risks in advance.

The company bears the cost, not the outsourcing partner. Contracts with HR vendors are usually written to limit the vendor's liability, which means the client absorbs most of the financial and legal fallout from a mishandled case.

There is also a slower cost. A badly handled termination in one market can affect how a company is perceived locally, by regulators, by recruiters, and by future hires who hear about it. That reputation cost is harder to measure, but it compounds over time in markets where word travels fast among a small professional community.

How to Build the Step Back In

The fix does not require a legal department. It requires asking a specific question before signing with an HR outsourcing partner: how have you handled contested terminations in this country, and what was the outcome.

A few practical steps help:

• Ask for a walkthrough of one past termination case the partner handled in the target country, including how it was resolved.
• Confirm who carries legal liability if a dispute goes to a labor court or tribunal, the client or the vendor.
• Check whether local employment contracts are drafted by someone with current knowledge of that country's labor code, not a template reused across markets.
• Review notice period and severance defaults for the jurisdiction before hiring starts, not after the first dispute.

None of this takes much time. It usually takes one extra conversation with the HR partner before the contract is signed, and a short review of local termination rules alongside legal counsel familiar with that market.

A Second Look Before You Sign

Dmitriy Misarenko's experience advising clients on HR outsourcing across different European markets points to a simple pattern: the companies that avoid trouble are the ones that ask about the hard cases early, not the ones with the longest vendor checklist. Payroll accuracy and onboarding speed are easy to compare between providers. Termination handling is harder to compare, which is exactly why it needs to be asked about directly instead of assumed.

For a company outsourcing HR into one new country, this is a short conversation. For a company doing it across several markets at once, as many e-commerce brands do when scaling across Europe, the same gap repeats in every jurisdiction, and the cost of skipping it multiplies with each one.

The step itself is small: one question, one case review, one check of local rules before the first contract goes out. What it protects against is not small at all.