The secret to managing a global workforce? Take the global approach you’ve already applied to your payroll, and do the same with your HR.
You run an international team, and an international team needs paying. That’s why you’ve already set up your international payroll. Each payday, the international payroll team ensures your workforce gets paid the right amount at the right time in the right currency. Local, in-country teams make sure you get the ‘how’ right as well as the ‘what’, ensuring you meet local payroll and tax regulations. And when you run your international payroll through a single, expert partner, it doesn’t matter how many people you pay and how widely they are spread across the globe – everything happens as it should, consistently and seamlessly.
Yet although getting the payroll right is an essential element of keeping your global workforce happy and well managed, it’s far from the only one. Fortunately, your international payroll has already given you a head start in taking a similar approach to your HR. And when you adopt international HR in tandem with your international payroll, you’ll gain big benefits from aligning the two.
Why choose international HR services?
Human Resource Management can be complex enough when you operate in a single country. Operate internationally, however, and you multiply the legal, cultural and operational complexity by the number of countries in which you operate.
Outsource your international HR and, in addition to offloading the day-to-day operation of complex HR issues, you also hire, onboard and engage your team in a compliant and culturally appropriate way. Inevitably, that’s much harder to do from your UK base where your alternative options are:
- Run it yourself from the UK, which increases the risk of error, fines, cultural pitfalls and reputational damage.
- Build relationships with HR partners in all the countries in which you operate, which may be feasible if your business is spread across one or two additional territories, but quickly becomes unmanageable as the network grows
How to align international HR and global payroll
- Harness natural alignment: In the UK, payroll and HR go hand in hand. That close alliance isn’t always replicated globally, so combining the two with a UK provider enables you to harness their combined advantages in every country.
- Standardise contracts: Operating an international HR enables you to easily achieve consistency across employee contracts, something that can be extremely difficult to manage when working with sperate international HR partners. That in turn has a positive knock-on effect for your international payroll, because the greater the contractual consistency, the simpler your payroll.
- Make better ‘brand fit’ hires: A common, consistent approach to recruitment is easier to achieve when you use an international HR service. Because everyone is on the same page, you not only achieve consistency in terms of skills and experience; you also ensure that you’re hiring people who are the right fit for your organisation. Better hiring means better retention, which reduces the future workload for both your payroll and HR teams.
- Collective bargaining: An international payroll presents clear challenges when it comes to agreeing the next round of pay rises. Consistency is vital to avoid discontent and disruption and that consistency is much easier to achieve when you align your payroll with a single HR service overseeing negotiations in every territory.
- Take a holistic view: An integrated international HR and payroll system enables you to consolidate payroll data, automate calculations and generate comprehensive reports for all locations. This centralisation supports collaboration between HR and payroll teams, minimising errors and giving HR/finance leaders a clearer, global view of operations.
- Leverage technology: HR information systems and payroll software can automate tasks such as employee data management, time and attendance tracking, and payroll processing. Cloud-based systems offer the advantage of real-time data access and collaboration, enabling seamless coordination between HR and payroll teams across different locations.
- Maintain clear communication channels: The interplay between HR and payroll is important to ensuring your people stay informed, wherever they work. When payroll makes changes to tax calculations, payroll schedules and benefits, close alignment with international HR will help ensure employees receive accurate, timely information that can help foster trust and minimise misunderstandings.
Partner with experts
Perhaps the most crucial element in aligning international HR and payroll is being able to rely on a partner who can help you navigate local regulations and compliance requirements. Who has in-depth knowledge of local labour laws, tax regulations and payroll processes. And who makes the process of operating (and paying) an international workforce easy.
To find out more about how we can help you achieve your international ambitions, talk to us.