For HR professionals managing the workforce of a multinational corporation, their priorities may be a more expensive than the ones working at a local firm. The responsibilities for HR professionals managing human capital and payroll in MNCs are enormous and mistakes made can be costly. Depending on the type of organisation and field of industry your company operates in, you’re likely to have HR and payroll challenges specific to your business. However, we’ve got you covered! In this blog, we will be going through:
- Top 4 HR Challenges in Payroll For Multinational Companies and Why CHRO Leaders & HR Professional Need A Robust HCM Solution
- How To Find the Right HCM Solution
- What To Consider When Outsourcing Payroll
- 3 Reasons Why In-Country Support Is Crucial in Payroll For MNCs
Top 4 HR Challenges in Payroll for MNCs
1. Keeping Track of Legal Regulations
Depending on how many locations your organisation operates in, keeping track of each and every legal change in labour law is a complicated task. For HCM professionals who manage their multinational payroll in-house, this process is especially painstaking.
2. Dealing with Data Discrepancy
Incorrect data is a common challenge for HR professionals in all fields. Even the smallest human error can snowball into the biggest problem, adding frustration to the process of forms and documentation running across various systems for recording and processing. The task of spotting a problem and identifying the source of the error can be especially draining one on top of being tremendously time consuming. This is even more challenging for HCM professionals who are comparing data across different locations where there are different formats and requirements, further complicating the payroll process.
3. Lack of Integration
Many companies prefer using proprietary payroll processing systems dedicated to the location they’re processing for as this ensures a higher level of accuracy. As opposed to being a system that aims to manage everything at once, using locally dedicated payroll processing systems that already carry a positive track record will mean you won’t have to worry about covering for the different legal nuances and requirements specific to each location.
However, these dedicated processing systems can create potential payroll challenges if you want to look at a full picture across different locations that your multinational company operates in. The problem here is when you don’t have the right connections and integrations, it decentralises information, making the transfer and comparison of data a lot more tedious. The solution here for HCM professionals is in having a centralised system, capable of integrating with the different systems for easy comparison and analysis. Essentially this will be your single source of truth, seamlessly integrated with various payroll solutions without relying on a cookie cutter model jeopardising the accuracy of your company’s payroll.
4. The Need for Analysis
HCM solutions are a great single source of truth. With so much data stored into the system, it’s a missed opportunity not to properly analyse it. Unfortunately, businesses miss out on this opportunity by using outdated solutions that lack the capability, or in other cases, simply overlooking the possibility of what they can do due to the work that is involved in first cleaning the database.
In fact, there’s a lot that can be done with people metrics, from engagement efforts, to employee performance, company turnover, and much other surrounding strategic workforce management. By engaging with the right HCM solution, you open up a plethora of opportunities, giving you the insights, you need as an HR professional to come up with a holistic understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the company’s workforce. This further allows you to form better strategies and iron out some common HR challenges in multinational companies.
Why Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) Leaders & HR Professionals Need a Robust HCM as Payroll Solution?
The key role of any CHRO or leading HR professional is in providing company specific workforce strategy. A good HCM solution can relieve a lot of the burden and payroll challenges that come onto the HR departments but more importantly provides insights into the organisation, allowing HR leaders to properly address company specific challenges.
Without a robust HCM, CHROs would be left to their own experience and devices, leaving them in the undesirable position of constantly responding instead of leading. Whereas, by using a reliable HCM that allows you to see trends within your organisation and provide data for your strategy, you’re in a much better position of leading the business and its workforce.
Instead of being tied down by tradition solutions, engaging with more robust and comprehensive HCM solutions in the market essentially arms CHROs with a key understanding of the business, opening up the role of HR and human capital management.
How to Find the Right HCM Solution
For those looking for a vendor or considering on using a more reliable HCM solution, it’s important to know that many factors come into play. As a rule of thumb, it is advised that you prepare ahead of time when looking for a solution for your company. Here are some of the factors that will ensure you find the right HCM solution for your HR needs and stay ahead of HR challenges in multinational companies.
- Clearance and support from executive level towards the project as well as assigned decision makers
- Defined set of objectives followed by a plan of execution
- A good understanding of the business and its requirements both short-term and long-term
- Alignment between stakeholders of all levels.
For a more comprehensive guide on finding the right HCM solution, our Simple Guide to Find & Compare HCM Solutions for APAC will definitely give you a comprehensive insight.
To summarise, here are some of the takeaways:
1. Escape the mentality of an HR respondent
For many years, HR has been understood as an administrative function. However, nowadays with the latest technology and HR solutions in the market, HR professionals can do a lot more than just respond.
2. Make use of company specific insights
There is a lot that can be done through HR analytics available in the latest HCM solutions. For HR leaders of multinational companies, this is an especially powerful tool as it allows you to make cross-region strategic decisions.
3. Proactively consult with different vendors for a thorough understanding
The last thing you want is to sign with a solution that fails to address your company’s needs and the HR and payroll challenges you’re facing as a multinational company. By proactively communicating with different vendors in the procurement process, you can get a better idea of what each solution offers and whether they are a fit for your needs.
What to Consider when Outsourcing Your Payroll
Many HR teams are now outsourcing their payroll to help enhance their HR function. Delegating a company’s payroll processing tasks to an external party has a lot of benefits, many of which we’ve mentioned in prior articles, such as Calculating the ROI of Payroll.
Among the various reasons, one of the greatest benefits HR professionals find with outsourcing their payroll is the professional level of service and expertise that is offered in outsourced payroll available for a fraction of the price when compared to carrying out payroll processes in-house.
However, this is not always the case with every payroll service. To really enhance a company’s HR, it is important to pay attention to the details, for not all payroll outsourcing services can and will provide the same level of support. The structure and payroll servicing demand can be very different depending on the industry, so it’s important to know if the payroll servicing company has a repertoire of experience in your given industry and whether they are able to meet your needs when it comes to processing your company’s payroll.
3 Reasons Why In-Country Support is Crucial in Payroll
While there are outsourced payroll servicing companies that seem to cover many different locations, not all these companies are, in fact, promising the same level of support. A question that HR professionals should ask to determine the quality and level of support payroll vendors are providing is whether they have in-country or local payroll support for their services.
Like a well-crafted plane, a company has many different moving parts that need to be managed and maintained with no less attention to detail than that of an aircraft. To have high quality support, you need professionals who are ready and on the ground to cater to the primary HR needs. With that said, here are the 3 key areas where in-country payroll support really makes a difference when it comes to outsourcing your payroll.
1. No language barrier
One of the more apparent benefits of having in-country support is of course with language. While English is spoken by most of the world and is recognised as an international language, several countries have a varying level of understanding towards English. When working with a payroll servicing provider, it can prove to be invaluable for the team to have someone on-the-ground who can converse in the native tongue, helping minimise the chance of miscommunication and error.
2. Save Time
Outsourcing is often associated with offshoring, though they refer to two very different concepts. Outsourcing a service is when tasks are delegated to an external entity. Offshoring, on the other hand, simply means delegating the tasks to people in another location, which can be either internal or external in nature.
Like the point of communication, ease of access to the HR service provider is crucial. The tasks related to the actual processing of payroll are very timely, where most of the work is piled up to a certain period in the month.
With the number of tasks peaking in a small time frame every month, there is little time to lose when it comes to the processing of payroll. For this reason, it is important to distinguish between outsourcing and offshoring, and understanding if your payroll vendor is operating within your location of business. Engaging with payroll service providers who work within your location of business can help minimise the lead time, which is invaluable when it comes to time sensitive work such as that of payroll processing.
A major frustration that can arise with payroll partners operating overseas comes primarily from time difference. While the obvious benefit of outsourcing your payroll to an offshore servicing company is with cheaper prices, the thing that HR professionals need to factor in is the matter of time loss, which can be the case when the payroll servicing provider is not providing in-country support, leading to unnecessarily long lead times.
3. Dedicated Professionals
A key reason why many leading businesses opt to outsource their payroll is due to their pursuit for a professional level of service. The goal is to enhance the business’ HR function by having a highly dedicated team to help the processing of payroll. This can be further enhanced by appointing your payroll to a vendor that offers in-country/ local payroll servicing support.
Instead of having a team that has their resources spread out by having to manage multiple country payroll, in-country support payroll services ensures that the client has a local team dedicated to the legislation and practices native to them. Local payroll support brings more to the table as it helps further enhance the quality of work through greater mutual understanding and knowledge of local practices.
Conclusion
Managing human capital and payroll in a multinational corporation is challenging, but by following best practices and utilising in-country support and outsourcing, you can overcome these challenges and enhance your HR function. It is essential to choose the right HCM solution and payroll service provider to ensure that your payroll processing is accurate and efficient. By doing so, you can focus on core HR functions and develop a comprehensive workforce strategy that aligns with your business objectives.
Get in touch with us today and learn how Links can help you enhance your payroll solutions!
Links International is an industry leader in innovative HR outsourcing with services such as payroll outsourcing, visa application, Employer of Record (EOR), recruitment and more! Contact us for more information on how we can help leverage your HR function.
