Move Your Offshore Team to Staff Domain. Zero Disruption. Full Control.
Your offshore team is already working. You built them. You trained them. You know what they can do. The only thing that needs to change is who’s running the infrastructure behind them.
Staff Domain’s Lift & Shift programme moves your existing offshore team — from a BPO, from another provider, from direct hire, or from contractor arrangements — onto our employment, security, and support infrastructure. Your team keeps working. Your operations keep running. We handle everything else
Dedicated migration coordinator assigned from day one
ISO 27001 security and EOR compliance from cut-over date
Your team’s tenure recognised — we don’t reset the clock
Who Moves Their Team to Staff Domain?
Four types of businesses use Lift & Shift. All of them have one thing in common: their offshore team is good, but their current arrangement isn’t.
Unhappy With Their Current Provider
You’re with Cloudstaff, Emapta, MicroSourcing, or another provider. The team is fine. The provider isn’t — poor support, rising fees, deteriorating service, or simply outgrowing what they offer. You want to move without losing your people.
Exiting a BPO Arrangement
Your team has been managed by a BPO. The BPO owns the employment, the infrastructure, and the processes. You’ve decided you want control — your own people, your own management, your own IP. You need to extract your team and rebuild under a dedicated model.
Converting Contractors to Employed Staff
You’ve been using Filipino freelancers or independent contractors — via Upwork, direct, or through an agency. The team’s growing. You need proper employment, statutory benefits, security compliance, and an infrastructure that can scale. It’s time to formalise.
Acquired a Business With an Offshore Team
You’ve acquired or merged with a business that had an offshore team. The existing provider arrangement doesn’t fit your governance model, pricing structure, or security requirements. You need to migrate the team cleanly.
What Moves With Your Team
What Moves With
Your Team
A Lift & Shift isn’t a hire. You’re not replacing your team — you’re moving the infrastructure underneath them. Everything that makes your team valuable comes with them.
Your People
- The same staff, on new contracts with Staff Domain as Employer of Record
- Their institutional knowledge, your workflows, your systems
- Their relationships with your onshore team
- Their role, seniority, and responsibilities unchanged
Your Operations
- Continuity of access to your tools, platforms, and systems
- Same working hours, same team structure, same reporting lines
- No onboarding ramp-up — they know the job already
- Your processes and quality standards stay intact
What Gets Upgraded
- ISO 27001 certified security environment with Teramind session monitoring
- Full EOR employment compliance under Philippine labour law
- Performance hardware: Dell Core i5, dual monitors, noise-cancelling headsets
- Dedicated Client Success Manager for ongoing support
- Above-market compensation benchmarks to lock in retention
Lift & Shift Guide
What You Need to Consider Before You Move
Moving an offshore team is not complicated. But it is detailed. Here are the four areas that require your attention, and what we do to help with each.
Your Exit Obligations to Your Current Provider
Every offshore staffing contract has exit provisions. Before you move, review:
Notice period: Most provider contracts require 30–90 days’ written notice. Your team can transition at the end of this period, or in some cases sooner by negotiation.
Exit fees: Some contracts include early termination fees, particularly within the first 12–24 months. Review your MSA and SOW carefully.
Non-solicit clauses: Most providers include clauses preventing you from directly hiring or re-employing their staff within a defined period. These clauses vary in enforceability and scope under Australian and Philippine law — you should seek legal advice on your specific contract.
Data and system access: Ensure your provider agreement covers how you retrieve your data, who owns your systems, and what happens to your team’s access on the cut-over date.
Equipment: If your current provider owns the hardware, replacement equipment must be ready before cut-over. How we help: We assign a migration coordinator from day one. They’ll review your existing contract with you (though not as legal advisors), flag the key provisions, help you plan a compliant exit timeline, and ensure nothing is missed. We’ve done this before. We know where the surprises hide.
Tenure Recognition: What Happens to the Clock
This is the part most providers gloss over. It’s the most important part to get right.
Under Philippine labour law, your team members are currently employed by your existing provider (or the BPO, or themselves as contractors). When they move to Staff Domain, they are entering a new employment contract with a new employer. This triggers specific legal obligations:
• Separation from old employer: If your staff are regular employees of the outgoing provider, they must be properly separated. Depending on the circumstances, this may involve separation pay, proper notice, and DOLE-compliant documentation. Your outgoing provider is responsible for this — but you need to confirm it happens correctly.
• Probationary period: Under the Philippine Labor Code, new employees can be placed on a 6-month probationary period. For known, performing team members joining via Lift & Shift, Staff Domain may waive the standard probationary period and onboard them directly as regular employees.
• Continuity of benefits: Staff Domain is committed to ensuring your team does not experience a reduction in pay, leave entitlements, or HMO coverage as a result of the transition. We benchmark compensation above local market rates and structure packages to maintain continuity.
• 13th month and leave accruals: These restart under the new employment arrangement. We’ll provide you a clear picture of your team’s entitlement position at cut-over.
How we help: Our Philippine HR team manages the full employment onboarding process — contracts, statutory registrations (SSS, PhilHealth, Pag-IBIG), HMO enrolment, leave setup, and STP configuration. Your team members receive their new employment documents before the cut-over date, with no gap in coverage.
Telling Your Team: The Communication Plan
One of the most common questions in a Lift & Shift: does my team’s tenure reset to zero?
The legal reality: when staff enter new employment with Staff Domain, their formal employment start date is the date they signed with us. Under Philippine labour law, tenure for security of tenure and probationary purposes is measured from the date of the new employment contract.
What we do in practice: Staff Domain recognises prior service for benefits and career development purposes. Specifically:
• Leave entitlements: We credit prior service when structuring leave packages, so long-serving team members don’t start at entry-level accrual.
• HMO tier: We match or exceed the HMO coverage level your team had with the outgoing provider.
• Career pathway: We record prior tenure in your team’s Staff Domain career file. CSM check-ins, performance reviews, and development conversations take prior service into account.
• Role and seniority: Your team’s job titles, seniority levels, and pay grades are carried over, not reset.
What we cannot legally do: We cannot guarantee carry-over of separation pay entitlements from the prior employer — that is a matter between your team members and the outgoing provider. We recommend you confirm with your outgoing provider that all entitlements are properly settled at separation.
How It Works
The Lift & Shift Process: How It Works
Most migrations complete in 4–8 weeks from first conversation to cut-over. Here’s the process
Week 1
Discovery & Assessment
You share your current headcount, roles, contract, and provider details. We review exit obligations, flag any legal considerations, and produce a migration plan and timeline.
Week 1–2
Contract & Legal Review
We review your MSA with the outgoing provider. You serve formal notice. We document non-solicit provisions and plan accordingly. Your migration coordinator produces a risk register for the transition.
Week 2–3
Staff Communication
We provide the communication toolkit. You deliver the announcement to your team with Staff Domain’s support. We make ourselves available for Q&A. Employment offer letters are prepared for each team member.
Week 3–4
Employment Onboarding
Your team members sign new employment contracts with Staff Domain. SSS, PhilHealth, Pag-IBIG registrations are transferred or created. HMO coverage is arranged. Tenure and leave entitlements are documented.
Week 4–6
Infrastructure Cut-Over
ISO 27001 security configuration deployed on new devices (if hardware is changing). System access reviewed and confirmed. Teramind monitoring enabled. Network and VPN configuration completed
Cut-Over
Go Live + Hypercare
Your team begins working under Staff Domain infrastructure. Your CSM runs daily check-ins for the first two weeks. Any issues are resolved immediately. You receive a migration completion report.
What Lift & Shift Looks Like for Each Migration Type
Moving From Another Offshore Staffing Provider
The most common scenario. Your team is already employed by the outgoing provider. The migration process:
- Outgoing provider is formally notified per your contract’s notice terms
- Non-solicit clauses are reviewed — in many cases, staff who voluntarily choose to follow the client to a new arrangement are not captured by these clauses, but you must review your specific contract
- Staff receive new Staff Domain offers at matching or better compensation
- A parallel employment period may be possible depending on notice terms
- Equipment is either transferred (if you own it) or replaced with Staff Domain standard hardware
Timeline: 4–6 weeks from notice to cut-over, depending on contract notice period.
Exiting a BPO
More complex, because BPO staff are not ‘your’ employees at all — they work for the BPO and are assigned to your account. The BPO may have dozens of clients; your team is a subset of their headcount.
- The BPO contract defines your notice terms and any exit conditions
- Your team members may need to apply for new positions with Staff Domain rather than being transferred — because they were never in a client-facing employment relationship with you
- Staff Domain conducts interviews and assessments for BPO team members joining via Lift & Shift — familiar faces get prioritised, but the hiring process applies
- Non-compete or non-solicit clauses between the BPO and your team members may restrict their ability to work for you directly — review these clauses carefully
- Operational handover planning is critical: document processes, access credentials, and institutional knowledge before exit
Timeline: 6–8 weeks. Allow extra time for the hiring process and knowledge transfer.
Converting Contractors to EOR Employment
If your Philippine team members are currently engaged as freelancers or independent contractors, they have no formal employment relationship to exit from. The migration is primarily an employment creation exercise
- Contractor arrangements are assessed for worker misclassification risk under Philippine law — DOLE has been increasingly active in addressing false contractor classification
- Staff Domain creates compliant employment contracts for each person, with proper statutory contributions from the start date
- Contractor rates are reviewed against employment benchmarks — some contractors earn above-market rates that will need to be structured properly into salary packages
- The tax treatment changes: employed staff are subject to withholding tax; contractors typically managed their own obligations
- This is often the highest-impact migration type for the staff involved — proper employment with HMO, leave entitlements, and career development can be transformative
Timeline: 3–4 weeks. Simplest migration legally, given there’s no prior employer to exit from.
Post-Acquisition Team Migration
When you’ve acquired a business with an existing offshore arrangement, you inherit their provider contract, their employment structure, and their team dynamics. The priorities:
- Understand what you actually acquired: review the acquired company’s provider contracts, team headcount, roles, and contract terms
- Identify the migration timeline: does the existing contract have a minimum term? Are there exit fees that affect acquisition economics?
- Assess the team: Staff Domain conducts a team health assessment to understand seniority, performance history, and any employment compliance issues with the outgoing arrangement
- Alignment to your governance model: the acquired team is onboarded to your SD environment (security configuration, system access, CSM structure) to bring them under your operational umbrella
- Culture and integration: post-acquisition offshore teams often feel disconnected from the new parent. We build integration into the onboarding process
Timeline: 6–8 weeks. Complexity depends on the existing contract and team size.
How We Protect You During the Transition
Migrations fail when they’re rushed, when staff are surprised, or when legal obligations aren’t met. Our Lift & Shift programme is designed to prevent all three.
Staff Retention Guarantee
If a team member declines to move and their departure creates a vacancy, Staff Domain recruits a replacement through our standard Grit Filter process at no additional recruitment fee within the first 90 days of cut-over.
Zero Gap in Security Coverage
ISO 27001 configuration, Teramind monitoring, and zero-trust application controls (ThreatLocker) are deployed on cut-over date. There is no period where your team operates outside the SD security environment.
Employment Compliance Audit
Our Philippine HR team reviews each team member’s incoming employment status, verifies statutory contribution history, and confirms benefit continuity before contracts are signed. We do not inherit other providers’ compliance gaps.
Migration Coordinator, Start to Finish
One dedicated point of contact manages every aspect of your migration: contract review, communication planning, employment onboarding, equipment cut-over, and post-migration hypercare. You are never passed between departments.
Sustainable Growth
What a Successful Migration Looks Like
When it’s done right, your team barely notices the migration happened — except that things got better. Common success indicators:
- 100% staff retention: every team member makes the move
- Zero operational disruption: no missed deadlines, no productivity dip, no confused clients
- Improved team sentiment: staff report feeling more valued, more secure, and better equipped
- Cleaner governance: ISO 27001 security, full EOR compliance, and one accountable partner
- Cost clarity: you know exactly what you’re paying, what your staff earn, and what’s included
Common Concerns
Won’t moving disrupt my team’s work?
Only if it’s handled badly. When staff are communicated with early, given clear answers, and see that their conditions are improving, they move smoothly. Our communication toolkit and migration coordinator are specifically designed to keep operations running without interruption. Most of our migrations complete with zero productivity impact
My current contract has non-solicit clauses. Can I still move my team?
Non-solicit clauses are common in the industry and vary significantly in scope and enforceability. Some only restrict direct solicitation by the client, not voluntary movement by the staff member. Others are broader. You need to review your specific contract with a lawyer — we can help you understand what you’re reading, but we’re not your legal advisor. In many cases,
properly handled migrations are compliant with non-solicit provisions. We have successfully completed migrations where non-solicit clauses existed.
What if some of my team don’t want to move?
It happens occasionally. The right communication approach dramatically reduces it — most reluctance comes from fear of the unknown, which disappears when staff have clear answers. For anyone who genuinely doesn’t want to move, that’s their right under Philippine law. We activate our replacement guarantee immediately and recruit through the Grit Filter at no additional cost within 90 days.
Will my team’s pay go down?
No. Staff Domain commits to matching or exceeding the incoming compensation package. We benchmark above local market rates. Your team should never receive less when moving to SD than they received before.
What about the exit fees I’ll owe my current provider?
Exit fees are real and need to be factored into your migration decision. They’re usually structured as a multiple of monthly fees for early termination, or a flat amount. Your migration coordinator will help you calculate the total transition cost (exit fees + migration costs + any setup) against the ongoing savings of moving to Staff Domain. In most cases, the payback period is under 12 months.
How long will this actually take?
4–6 weeks for a standard migration from another provider. 3–4 weeks for a contractor-to-employment migration. 6–8 weeks for a BPO exit or post-acquisition migration. The notice period in your current contract is usually the rate-limiting step.
Build Team
Your Team Is Ready. The Infrastructure Needs to Change.
Tell us your current setup — provider, headcount, roles, and what isn’t working. We’ll review your exit obligations, design your migration plan, and move your team across with zero disruption.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I move my offshore team from another provider to Staff Domain?
Yes. Staff Domain’s Lift & Shift programme migrates existing offshore teams from other providers, BPOs, contractor arrangements, or post-acquisition structures. The process covers exit obligations, Philippine employment onboarding, tenure and benefit continuity, staff communication, and zero-disruption cut-over. Most migrations complete in 4–6 weeks.
What happens to my team’s tenure when they move to Staff Domain?
Under Philippine labour law, your team enters new employment contracts with Staff Domain as the Employer of Record. Formal tenure resets to the new start date for legal purposes. However, Staff Domain recognises prior service for leave entitlements, HMO tier, career development, and compensation benchmarking. We also waive the standard 6-month probationary period for established team members joining via Lift & Shift.
What are the typical exit fees when leaving an offshore staffing provider?
Exit fees vary by provider and contract. Most MSAs include a notice period (30–90 days) and may include early termination fees for contracts exited within the first 12–24 months. Your Staff Domain migration coordinator will review your contract with you and help calculate the total transition cost against ongoing savings.
Can I move my team if my current contract has a non-solicit clause?
Non-solicit clauses are common and vary in scope and enforceability. Many apply to active solicitation by the client rather than voluntary movement by the staff member. You should seek legal advice on your specific contract. Staff Domain’s migration coordinators have experience working within these constraints and can help you design a compliant transition approach.
How do I tell my offshore team that they’re changing employers?
Early, clearly, and positively. Staff Domain provides a communication toolkit including announcement templates and a pre-written FAQ addressing the specific concerns Filipino professionals have (job security, pay continuity, HMO coverage, government contributions). Our migration coordinator is available to join your announcement call if you want Staff Domain represented directly.
What if a team member doesn’t want to move?
Staff members have the right to decline. Good communication eliminates most reluctance. For any team member who genuinely chooses not to move, Staff Domain activates its replacement guarantee and recruits a replacement through the Grit Filter at no additional recruitment cost within 90 days of cut-over.
How long does a Lift & Shift migration take?
3–4 weeks for contractor-to-employment migrations. 4–6 weeks for migrations from another offshore staffing provider. 6–8 weeks for BPO exits or post-acquisition migrations. The notice period in your current contract is usually the primary timing constraint.
