Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/86587
Compliance expand their operations across the globe, says Klein, "It is inevitable that they will look to reliable partners with the experience, technology platforms and expertise to help them achieve consistent and compliant processes across their organisations." Some companies and providers such as SD Worx are attacking the global complexities of evolving payroll laws and regulations at the local level, leveraging internal and external compliance experts and technology solutions to make the world smaller from a governance standpoint. SD Worx, for instance, employs tax and legal experts in many but not all European countries, addressing payroll regulatory challenges elsewhere on the continent through strategic partners such as Aditro, Trianon, and Sereesco. "You can consolidate [payroll] on a global level, but you always need the local expertise," says Joos. "When you offer multi-country payroll, you need the local expertise of each country to guarantee clients compliance and accuracy." He adds, "For local issues, we make sure that the local client can address our local expert." NorthgateArinso, on the other hand, employs a global compliance team. Its sole responsibility is to monitor and assess evolving laws and regulations governing the many services it provides in the more than 100 countries where its clients have employee populations. This centralised group compiles legal and regulatory data and distributes it to a wide range of process owners throughout the organisation. These people are then responsible for incorporating the legal changes into the firm's products, processes, and procedures. "By focussing on legal and regulatory compliance, we are able to customise our service delivery to maintain the highest level of compliance not only throughout our organisation, but our clients' organisations as well, resulting in strong local solutions," says Langlois. "To ensure our clients benefit from this local and global focus, we hold regular discussions with our clients to discuss the proper implementation of the laws and regulations that impact the successful delivery of services." She adds, "Global trends can affect local laws and vice versa, reinforcing the importance of having a command of both." Others see it exactly the same. "It's about balance," says McPherson at processHR. "What we encourage our clients to do when evaluating outsourcing opportunities in their HR function is to 'think global,' while ensuring that their future vendors 'act local.' " Seabury agrees: "Both clients and providers have to be flexible enough to be both global and local at the same time." Tech Tools Thankfully, this balance is achievable not just through people, but through technology—the various tools such as global learning management systems, global payroll systems and global applicant tracking systems, among others, slicing and dicing global data to the granular local level. "Technology is crucial to enabling legally compliant solutions on the back and front end of HR delivery," Langlois says. She asserts that the use of web-based technology helps Northgate Arinso stay abreast of legislative changes, while giving it the tools to help its clients navigate evolving regulatory and legislative change. "Our global compliance team monitors legislative changes throughout governmental, legal, and industry association websites all over the world," Langlois explains. "The team also manages the successful implementation of these laws and regulations into our processes, procedures, and products, by way of an internally developed system, ensuring our clients have the most up-to-date information at all times." Many multinationals might find what they're looking for, compliance-wise, from technology tools at the local country level—particularly in APAC, McPherson says. "Partnering with an experienced transactional vendor that has a presence in each of the countries where a multinational organisation is operating will most often produce a far superior result in terms of time and money than managing it in-house," he says. "This is especially true for businesses expanding their head count in Asian markets." The technology solutions available to multinational clients and outsourcing providers have grown well beyond enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, several observers commented. "Many technology providers now provide localisation services [that were] originally the domain of the ERP providers, " says Seabury. "Such localisations are now available for many specific HR functional tools, including payroll, compensation, recruitment, knowledge management, and performance management." While many large multinationals tend to use ERP solutions to consolidate payroll globally, midsize and smaller multinationals often turn to outsourcing providers for these services, says Jan Van Mol, international marketing manager at SD Worx, which offers an analysis and reporting tool that functions as a layer on top of local payroll engines. "Clients are provided actual and historical administrative and strategic payroll and HR reporting, which is consolidated across European countries," Van Mol notes. What else? Klein cites newer Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions as cutting edge in helping to capture local data. "By utilising a single SaaS platform like our Cloudpay solution, organisations can consolidate complexity into simplicity," he says. Despite all these benefits, technology will never absolve multinational organisations or their service providers of their joint responsibility to remain compliant with the law. As Seabury puts it, "Reliance on technology to solve these challenges is still a dream for the future." As the world gets smaller, some challenges get bigger. SUMMER 2012 | www.hroglobal.com [31]