01.The Two Models Explained
02.Employer of Record (EOR)
In the EOR model, Treba is the legal employer of your dedicated team in Kenya. Treba handles payroll, tax (PAYE), social security (NSSF), health insurance (SHIF), and compliance with the Employment Act 2007. Your team members are legally employed by Treba but operationally managed by you.
- In practice, this means:
- Staff join your Slack or Teams workspace.
- They attend your daily stand-ups and team meetings.
- You assign tasks, set priorities, and review output directly.
- Treba handles HR, payroll, compliance, and infrastructure.
You get the workforce. Treba removes the administrative and legal friction of employing people in a foreign jurisdiction. You do not need to register a Kenyan entity, navigate PAYE deductions, or manage NSSF contributions. The EOR structure also mitigates Permanent Establishment risk — the tax trap that catches UK companies who create a taxable presence in Kenya through direct hiring.
Managed Services
In the Managed Services model, Treba owns the end-to-end delivery. You define the scope, quality standards, and KPIs. A Treba Team Lead manages the daily execution, QA, and reporting. You receive completed work — not a team to manage.
In practice:
- You define deliverables, SLAs, and acceptance criteria.
- A Treba Team Lead manages the team, assigns tasks, and conducts QA.
- You receive weekly performance reports against agreed metrics.
- Pricing is typically per-unit or per-deliverable, not per-head.
- You do not manage individual team members. You manage the output. This is a fundamentally different relationship — closer to a vendor engagement than a team extension.
The Comparison Matrix
Comparison
| Dimension | EOR | Managed Services |
|---|---|---|
| Daily Management | You manage the team directly | Treba Team Lead manages |
| Pricing Model | Fixed monthly fee per head | Per-unit or per-deliverable |
| Integration | Staff on your Slack/Teams | Separate team, weekly reports |
| QA Responsibility | Your team leads QA | Treba owns QA with SLA guarantees |
| Flexibility | Scale up/down by headcount | Scale up/down by volume |
| Best For | Ongoing team extension | Project-based or process-driven work |
| Compliance | Treba as legal employer, you manage work | Treba as legal employer + operational manager |
| Management Overhead | Higher — you run stand-ups, reviews | Lower — Treba Team Lead handles day-to-day |
03.Cost Comparison
The pricing structures differ, which makes direct comparison non-trivial.
EOR Pricing
A fixed monthly fee per team member. This covers salary, statutory contributions, office space, equipment, compliance infrastructure, and Treba’s management fee. Typical annual cost per head ranges from £8,400 (entry-level support agent) to £19,200 (senior accountant or legal researcher).
The cost is predictable. You know exactly what each hire costs per month. There are no volume-based fluctuations. The trade-off is that you absorb management overhead — your own managers spend time directing, reviewing, and quality-checking the outsourced team’s output.
Managed Services Pricing
Per-unit pricing: a defined cost per verification processed, per document reviewed, per ticket resolved, or per deliverable completed. The headline cost per unit is typically higher than the implied per-unit cost under EOR (because Treba’s management layer is included), but your internal management costs are lower.
The total cost comparison depends on volume. At low volumes, EOR is usually cheaper because you are paying a flat monthly rate. At high volumes, Managed Services can be more cost-effective because the per-unit rate includes QA overhead that would otherwise require your own managers.
04.The Hidden Cost: Management Overhead
This is the variable that most UK buyers underestimate. An EOR team of five requires a UK-side manager to run stand-ups, assign tasks, review output, and handle escalations. That manager’s time has a cost. If they spend 10 hours per week managing the outsourced team, and their loaded cost is £80,000 per year, the management overhead is approximately £20,000 per year — added to the EOR fees.
Managed Services removes this cost because the Treba Team Lead absorbs the management function. But the Team Lead’s cost is baked into the per-unit rate or the management fee, so you are paying for it — just not directly.
The honest comparison: calculate your EOR cost + internal management overhead, and compare that to the Managed Services per-unit cost at your expected volume. The crossover point varies by function, but for teams of 5+ doing process-driven work, Managed Services frequently wins on total cost.
Control and Quality
The EOR model gives you more control. You decide task priority, review cadence, tool adoption, and team rituals. You can pivot the team’s focus mid-sprint. You have direct access to every team member.
The Managed Services model gives you less control but more consistency. Treba’s QA layer means every deliverable passes a quality gate before it reaches you. SLAs define acceptable error rates, turnaround times, and escalation protocols. You do not manage the work, but the work is managed.
The question is whether you want to manage quality or receive quality. If your team already has strong managers with available capacity, EOR preserves your operational culture. If your managers are at capacity and you need output without adding management headcount, Managed Services is the more sustainable choice.
Compliance Implications
Both models use the same underlying employment structure: Treba is the legal employer in Kenya. PAYE, NSSF, SHIF, and Employment Act compliance are handled identically.
The compliance difference is in data handling and operational responsibility.
Under EOR, your compliance team manages the data protection relationship directly. You control access, retention, and processing instructions. The DPA is between your company and Treba.
Under Managed Services, Treba has more operational discretion over how work is executed. The DPA still governs data handling, but Treba’s Team Lead makes day-to-day decisions about task allocation, which means your compliance team needs to trust Treba’s internal controls. ISO 27001-aligned policies, staff vetting, and physical security apply equally to both models.
The Decision Framework
Choose EOR if:
- You want your outsourced team to feel like an extension of your internal team.
- Your work is varied and requires frequent reprioritisation.
- You have UK-side management capacity to direct the team.
- Your headcount need is 1–4 people and the function is embedded in your workflow.
- You are outsourcing a role (e.g., a dedicated KYC analyst who sits in your compliance pod).
Choose Managed Services if:
- Your work is process-driven with measurable, repeatable outputs.
- You want SLA-guaranteed quality without managing the QA yourself.
- Your UK managers are at capacity and cannot absorb another team.
- Your headcount need is 5+ and the work runs in defined volumes.
- You are outsourcing a function (e.g., all KYC verification processing).
05.The Hybrid Option
Some Treba clients start with EOR for 2–3 roles to build confidence and understand the workflow, then transition to Managed Services once the processes are documented and the quality benchmarks are established. This is a pragmatic approach that reduces risk while preserving the option to move to a more hands-off model as trust builds.
The transition typically takes 4–8 weeks: the EOR team’s SOPs are documented, a Treba Team Lead is assigned, SLAs are defined, and a parallel-run period validates that the Managed Services model delivers equivalent quality.
