Can a 50 to 100-seat team work under an EOR?
by Justin Pavsic, Co-Founder and CEO, Staff Domain
Yes, but what changes between 10 seats and 100 is not what most people assume. An employer of record (EOR) can legally employ a team of any size in the Philippines or South Africa. Our own pricing gets more efficient per head as a team grows, not less. What shifts as headcount climbs past 50 and toward 100 is a small set of real compliance obligations that switch on at specific marks. For a smaller number of businesses, that range is also when owning a local entity starts paying for itself.
My honest answer: EOR is the right way to start. It is not always the right way to stay.
I’ve watched this exact question come up more often this year than in the two before it combined. Clients who started with five or ten seats on EOR eighteen months ago are now sitting at 60, 70, sometimes past 100, and asking whether they should keep adding headcount the same way or do something different. It’s a good question, and it deserves a straight answer instead of a sales pitch.
What changes between 10 seats and 100 seats
Nothing changes in the legal permissibility of an EOR at any specific number. There is no cap on how many people an EOR can employ in either the Philippines or South Africa, but real, headcount-triggered obligations do sit inside the range this piece is about, and they are worth knowing before you get there rather than after.
In the Philippines, every employer must register its establishment with DOLE under Rule 1020 of the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Standards, regardless of size, so that part does not change with headcount. What does change is this: once a workplace crosses 100 workers, DOLE’s OSH rules require a formally constituted Health and Safety Committee with a specific composition, department heads, worker representatives, and a company physician or nurse among them. A 40-person team does not need this. A 100-person team does.
In South Africa, the threshold that matters sits at 50, not 100. Since January 2025, the required test is on headcount alone: 50 or more employees makes you a designated employer. Full stop. A turnover-based route used to catch smaller employers, too, but that was removed. Cross the 50-employee line now and you’ll be required to prepare and file a formal Employment Equity plan and report on it annually.
None of these facts should scare anyone off. Reputable providers handle both routinely. The point is narrower: “Can I do this?” was never the real question, but “What does my provider need to already have in place once I cross these lines?” is.
The arithmetic is worth a proper walk-through, because the assumption that per-head fees only climb is wrong.
EOR pricing is not one flat rate that rises in a straight line as a team grows. Ours is tiered: the per-seat rate steps down at set headcount bands, so seat 60 costs less per month than seat six, not more.
That monthly rate is not a bare payroll fee, either, because it bundles:
- Bespoke recruitment via our award-winning, proprietary Grit Filter system
- Business-grade equipment
- Dedicated workspaces
- Enterprise-level, ISO 27001 certified security
- A dedicated Client Success Manager
Unbundle those and build them in-house instead, and the bill adds up fast. The local-entity-plus-internal-HR route will start more expensive than you’d think, not cheaper.
That is why the real crossover point, where owning an entity and running HR in-house beats staying on EOR, sits further out than 100 seats for most mid-market businesses.
A hundred people is a serious team, but it is rarely the point where the fixed costs of a local entity, a compliance function, and dedicated HR headcount have been earned back. The businesses where the maths flips sit well past 100, running for years, not the ones just crossing the threshold this piece is about.
Where the compliance picture gets more serious
This is the part worth raising now rather than waiting for someone else to raise it later.
Philippine labour law has a separate concept worth understanding: contractor registration under Department Order 174-17. If a staffing arrangement isn’t properly registered as a legitimate contractor, it can trigger a legal presumption of labour-only contracting, and Philippine courts have upheld that presumption in more than one case. In that scenario, the client business, not the staffing provider, can end up treated as the direct employer of the workers. This is a structuring question, not a headcount question. It applies at five seats as much as at a hundred. It simply carries more weight the more people and the more history are riding on getting it right.
The three shapes a growing offshore team can take
We run all three of these models, so I’ll describe them plainly rather than pitch them.
- Employer of Record
We are the legal employer. You direct the work, we handle payroll, statutory contributions, and compliance. Fastest to start, no entity required, cost scales with headcount. - Assisted Entry
You own the entity and you’re the employer from day one. We help you get the recruitment, compliance guidance, and operational setup right, but we are not the employer, and we don’t run your payroll. This suits businesses with the internal HR and legal capability to manage direct employment and a preference for full control from the outset, at the cost of a longer setup, typically three to four months before go-live. - Build Operate Transfer (BOT), or a company-owned entity from the start
We build and run the team, then hand the entity over once established, or you set up and run your own offshore entity directly, sometimes called a global capability centre (GCC). Either way, you end up owning the operation outright. Slower to reach, but the natural endpoint for a team that’s large, permanent, and core to what you do. Our engagement models page walks through the mechanics of each in more detail.
None of these is objectively better. They answer different questions: how long will this team run, how much of the compliance relationship do you want to own, and is your headcount still climbing or has it plateaued.
The case for just staying on EOR
Here’s the strongest argument against everything I’ve just said, and it deserves a fair hearing.
Plenty of 50 to 100 seat teams stay on EOR indefinitely and never have a problem. If the function isn’t core to the business, if the team’s size might shrink as easily as it grew, or if the client genuinely has no appetite to own PH or SA compliance directly, EOR at 80 seats can be exactly right. Entity setup isn’t free. It costs real time, adds legal overhead, and locks you into a jurisdiction in a way EOR doesn’t. For a business that values flexibility over ownership, staying put is a rational choice, not a failure to plan.
I wouldn’t talk anyone out of that if it’s genuinely their situation. The mistake isn’t choosing EOR at scale. The mistake is never revisiting the choice as the team grows.
What the country's own data says about scale
It helps to look at what’s actually happening in the Philippines at the high end of this spectrum, because it corrects a common assumption.
Global capability centre headcount in the Philippines reached roughly 270,000 workers in 2025, up from 250,000 the year before, giving the country an 18% share of global GCC employment (IBPAP, 2026). The country now hosts around 160 GCCs, second only to India (IBPAP, 2026). JPMorgan Chase alone employs more than 21,000 people at its Philippine GCC, which gives some sense of what this model looks like at the far end of the scale.
But that far end isn’t the norm, and it isn’t the bar a 50 to 100 seat team needs to clear. Everest Group’s analysis, which tracks more than 8,500 GCCs worldwide, finds that a large share of the centres set up in the last three to five years run as micro or nano operations under 100 staff. You don’t need to become the next JPMorgan-scale GCC to make a GCC-shaped structure work for you. You need the right structure for your actual headcount and trajectory, not the biggest one on the market.
A practical way to decide
Three questions tell you most of what you need to know.
- How long is this team likely to run?
A season or two? EOR. Years? Worth reviewing. - Do you want to own the compliance relationship, or would you rather someone else carried it?
If you prefer ownership, Assisted Entry or BOT. If you prefer to hand it off, go with EOR. - Is your headcount still climbing, or has it settled?
Still climbing past 50 to 100 seats, it’s worth modelling the entity path now, even if you’re not ready to move yet. Settled, EOR at your current size may simply be the right answer.
If your team is heading past 50 seats and you haven’t run this comparison yet, it’s worth a conversation before the decision gets made for you by default rather than by choice.
FAQ
Is there a legal headcount limit for an EOR arrangement in the Philippines?
No hard legal cap exists, but a Health and Safety Committee becomes mandatory once a workplace crosses 100 workers, and contractor-registration rules carry more weight as headcount grows.
What is the difference between an EOR and Assisted Entry?
Under EOR, the provider is the legal employer. Under Assisted Entry, the client owns the entity and is the employer from day one, with the provider giving operational and compliance guidance rather than employment.
When should a growing offshore team move off EOR?
Generally worth reviewing once the team is past roughly 50 seats, expected to run for years rather than a season, or the client wants direct control of the employment relationship.
Is a global capability centre only for large companies?
No. A large share of newly established GCCs run under 100 staff, so scale alone isn’t the deciding factor.
What is build operate transfer in offshore staffing?
A model where the provider builds and runs the team first, then transfers ownership of the entity and staff to the client once it’s established.
This article is general information, not legal or tax advice. Get advice specific to your situation before acting.
