How XbyX kept two employees who wanted to relocate to Cyprus

About XbyX

XbyX® – Women in Balance (chowa GmbH) is a Berlin-based femtech brand offering plant-based nutritional supplements, online video programs, and expert-guided resources for women navigating perimenopause and menopause. Founded in 2019, XbyX sells direct-to-consumer across Germany and Switzerland, and has served more than 250,000 customers.

The challenge

When a member of the XbyX Marketing team told Josephin Hußmann, the company's Senior People & Culture Manager, that she was planning to move to Cyprus, Josephin had a straightforward question to answer: do they let her go, or find a way to keep her?

For most Berlin-headquartered companies, an employee relocating outside Germany has historically meant the end of the employment relationship. There is no German payroll mechanism for someone who is no longer a German tax resident, and the prospect of setting up a local entity in a country where you employ one person is rarely worth it. The default, in the absence of another option, is to lose the employee.

XbyX chose differently. The company had no prior international hiring experience — their team worked entirely within Germany, with around a third of employees remote but always within German borders. They were not a company that had built international employment infrastructure. They simply did not want to lose the employee.

Their first attempt, with one of the larger EOR providers in the market, ended without resolution. The process moved slowly, involved multiple contact persons, and was eventually canceled because the provider had classified XbyX's industry as pharmaceutical — an incorrect categorization for a femtech supplement brand. The company had lost time, gained no clarity, and was starting over.

What was at stake

The most immediate risk was operational: without a compliant employment arrangement in Cyprus, XbyX would lose the employee. There was no legal path to keeping her on the German payroll once she had relocated and become tax-resident in Cyprus.

Beyond that, Josephin flagged the permanent establishment exposure. When a German company allows an employee to work habitually from another country, it can inadvertently create a taxable presence — a permanent establishment — in that country without intending to. A permanent establishment can trigger local corporate tax liability on the income attributable to those activities. For a company with no prior international employment experience, this was entirely new territory.

There was also a less visible operational risk. If XbyX had been unable to find a compliant employment solution before the employee relocated, the company would have faced terminating an employment relationship it wanted to preserve — and then potentially attempting to re-engage the same person through a different structure later. That is not a straightforward process under either German or Cypriot employment law, and it was not what XbyX wanted.

Why they chose Rivermate

XbyX came to the search with a clear brief shaped by their first experience: EU-based, smaller, personal, and responsive.

Three things made Rivermate stand out quickly. First, pricing: Josephin had assumed a smaller, EU-headquartered provider would cost more than the market leaders. It did not. The fee structure was comparable.

Second, the experience of first contact. After the introductory call, the Rivermate team sent through a full breakdown of the terms and conditions without delay. Follow-up questions were answered promptly.

Third, the overall sense of the engagement. For a team navigating cross-border employment for the first time and with one failed attempt behind them, that confidence in the relationship mattered as much as the process itself.

The one reservation before starting was simply that Josephin had not heard of Rivermate before. The communication style and process clarity resolved it quickly.

How Rivermate helped

Daan de Wildt, Account Executive at Rivermate, managed the employee onboarding for XbyX. The ongoing client relationship was handled by Karl van der Weert, Head of Account Management, and Dasola Jikiemi, Customer Success Manager at Rivermate.

From the first call, the process moved at a different pace than what XbyX had experienced. Terms and conditions were shared immediately after the introductory call; questions received quick responses. The relationship Josephin describes is "friendly, casual, approachable" — a working style that stands in direct contrast to the formal, slow, multi-contact experience of the previous provider. "When we have a question, we just ask and get an immediate response," she said.

The first employee — the Marketing team member relocating to Cyprus — was employed through Rivermate from 1 June 2026. The onboarding was smooth and no complications arose. The biggest surprise, Josephin noted, was simply how quickly and straightforwardly the process had been completed.

Three weeks after the first start date, XbyX returned to Rivermate to begin a second onboarding — a second employee also relocating to Cyprus. The speed of the first engagement was a direct signal and within three weeks, XbyX was already confident enough in the process to initiate it again.

What this means for similar companies

If your company has employees who want to relocate — whether it is one person this year or a pattern you are starting to see across your team — you are facing a decision that will recur. The answer your company gives the first time tends to set the precedent.

XbyX's answer was to find a way to say yes. The cost of an EOR arrangement is real and needs to be factored into the employment decision; Josephin acknowledged this directly. But in the XbyX case, the calculation was straightforward: the cost of losing an experienced team member and replacing them outweighed the EOR fee, especially given that Cypriot employer contributions are lower than Germany's.

The less obvious outcome is what Josephin described as nothing changing for the rest of the team. EOR does not require the employer to build new internal HR processes, learn a new country's employment law, or add headcount to the people function. Rivermate handles the employment mechanics; XbyX continues managing the working relationship as they always have.