WORKFLEX secures €37 million to tackle the hidden complexity of distributed work and cross-border compliance

The distribution of work has profoundly transformed how companies organize their operations. Within just a few years, the ability to work from any location has become an operational norm, driven by remote work, global teams, and growing employee expectations for flexibility.

This transformation, often analyzed through the lens of productivity or talent attraction, reveals another, less visible reality: a rapidly increasing level of regulatory complexity. While work practices have moved beyond borders, they remain governed by deeply territorial legal frameworks.

A normalized mobility, a still territorial regulatory framework

Distributed work has led to the normalization of international mobility. Employees travel more frequently, for shorter durations, with less predictable patterns. A few days in Berlin followed by a week in Lisbon is no longer seen as exceptional, but rather as a natural extension of hybrid work.

This apparent fluidity contrasts with the rigidity of regulatory frameworks. Each trip activates, often without companies realizing it, a set of obligations rooted in national systems. Taxation, social security, labor law, and immigration rules continue to apply according to jurisdiction-specific regulations, rarely harmonized.

According to Eurostat data cited by WorkFlex, more than 120 million business trips were recorded in Europe in 2024. Behind this figure lies not just increased mobility, but a multiplication of events likely to trigger regulatory obligations.

From complex cases to invisible flows

The shift is not only quantitative. It is fundamentally structural.

International compliance is no longer a series of isolated cases handled individually. It has become a continuous flow, made up of successive micro-events, each potentially carrying legal implications. This evolution makes the issue less visible, yet significantly harder to control.

What was once considered exceptional—expatriation or secondment—is now embedded in daily operations. The challenge no longer lies solely in the complexity of the rules, but in how frequently they are triggered.

An accumulation of risks that is difficult to grasp

In this context, risk does not necessarily manifest immediately. It accumulates, often silently.

A misclassified trip can lead to tax exposure in a given country, unexpected social security obligations, or non-compliance with local labor laws. Taken individually, these issues may appear marginal. However, their repetition creates cumulative risk, often only revealed during audits, inspections, or disputes.

This gap between operational reality and its regulatory translation complicates oversight for HR departments. Compliance is no longer a peripheral issue; it becomes a cross-functional concern, spanning financial, legal, and organizational dimensions.

Tools still misaligned with the scale of the problem

Despite rising complexity, practices remain largely inherited from an earlier model. Management still relies heavily on fragmented tools, email exchanges, and spreadsheets consolidated over time. These approaches may suffice at low volumes but quickly reach their limits as mobility increases.

This reflects not just a tooling gap, but a deeper mismatch between the nature of the problem and the solutions used. International compliance is no longer a set of procedures to document, but a system to orchestrate.

The emergence of a dedicated software layer

It is within this gap that platforms like WorkFlex position themselves. Their approach consists of turning compliance into an operational layer, capable of activating in real time as mobility occurs.

The challenge is not only to identify obligations, but to make them actionable at scale, in a consistent and traceable manner. This requires structuring rules, automating decisions, and generating documentation that can withstand audits.

Compliance thus shifts in nature, moving from a downstream verification process to an upstream operational condition.

From compliance to global risk management

This evolution is accompanied by a broader scope. International mobility raises not only regulatory questions but also employer responsibility in terms of employee safety and protection.

The integration of “duty of care” features, such as alert systems or crisis management tools, reflects this shift. Compliance is now intertwined with security, geopolitical, and business continuity concerns.

This repositioning extends the issue beyond HR and legal departments to include finance, operations, and overall corporate governance.

A structural tension between flexibility and regulation

Distributed work is built on a promise of flexibility, enabling companies to access global talent, organize work more fluidly, and reduce geographic constraints.

Regulation, however, remains grounded in territorial sovereignty. This divergence creates a structural tension that is unlikely to disappear in the short term. On the contrary, increasing regulation and enforcement may further intensify complexity.

In this context, international mobility emerges both as a lever for efficiency and as a growing source of constraints. It can no longer be addressed solely as an HR issue, but must be treated as a matter of organizational architecture and risk management.

A market in transition: between specialized platforms and global employment players

The international mobility market is undergoing a still-incomplete structuring phase, at the intersection of several historically distinct segments.

On one side, traditional global mobility players, such as Topia or large consulting firms, continue to manage expatriation flows within centralized models that are poorly adapted to the rise of short-term mobility. On the other, a new generation of platforms, such as Work From Anywhere or rhome, aims to address distributed work by automating regulatory compliance.

Adding to this direct competition is a more diffuse but potentially decisive pressure: global employment platforms like Deel or Remote, which already integrate compliance into their core products and could extend their scope to short-term mobility.

In this fragmented landscape, the dividing line remains unclear between specialized solutions focused on “event-based compliance” and broader platforms that may integrate it as just another feature.

This gradual market recomposition suggests less a head-on competition than a convergence of models toward a shared objective: absorbing regulatory complexity into an integrated software infrastructure.

WorkFlex raises €37 million to structure distributed work compliance

Founded in 2022 in Amsterdam by Pieter Manden and Patrick Koch, WorkFlex develops a platform dedicated to managing compliance related to international mobility. The company announced a €37 million funding round led by Spectrum Equity, with participation from Visionaries Club and s16vc.

The platform enables companies to structure and automate the management of obligations related to cross-border travel, including A1 certificates, posted worker directive notifications, visas, and tax exposure.

WorkFlex reports handling more than 100,000 cross-border trips per year, with growth exceeding 250% and over 500 enterprise clients, including Deel, BioNTech, and Flix. The company employs more than 100 people and plans to use this funding to accelerate its European expansion, strengthen its product capabilities, and extend its positioning toward global mobility risk management.