When it comes to compensating a globally dispersed workforce, managing merit increases, bonus plans, long-term incentives, sales plans, or non-cash rewards can pose challenges to international organizations.
Over and over, we see our customers faced with four challenges that can make managing global compensation so complex. But with dedicated compensation management software, these intricacies may not seem so complex after all.
Managing the "multi" factor
Even if your compensation schemas or merit increase policies are relatively simple, a global presence introduces complexity. Varying currencies, languages, companies, time zones, and reward cultures all add layers to your compensation processes. Compensation management software maintains consistency throughout all processes, respecting a multi-company, multi-currency, and multi-language environment. It enables you to break out of organizational silos and create groups of employees—such as top talent, high potential, or expatriates—throughout all processes.
Maintaining the balance between global and local
Bonus plans, merit increase policies, and benefits need to be consistent throughout your organization, but with local labor contracts and compensation practices sometimes requiring flexibility, finding the balance between a global view and local execution can be a challenge. Globally flexible compensation software gives you all of the tools you need to ensure the required consistency yet with the adaptability to manage country-specific needs, such as having a different merit matrix in each country, defining a global process, and adapting it by region.
Driving an extended process
Take this scenario: You have to ensure that 5,000 managers in 20 countries will assign consistent targets to their teams for STI by the very same day. Communication in 12 time zones and 20 languages can be a problem unto itself. Compensation management software takes the pain out of this process by managing different compensation statements, data entry, and approval forms. All of this simplifies the communication of a range of workflows including target assignments, employee evaluations, merit increases, and benefit or reward assignments. This kind of automation saves hours of work overseeing the status of your compensation processes and sending proactive alerts to synchronize your organization.
Optimizing your budget
Without unlimited resources, you have to get the most out of your available budget. The need to create many simulation scenarios to define the optimal allocation of the budget throughout the various regions, division, and business units that make it is a not an exact science. Here’s where dedicated compensation management saves the day. Simulation features help you calculate the projected impact on areas such as merit increases or bonus pool assignment. You can run what-if scenarios to simulate the expected results by country, division, or any cluster of employees that is relevant in your compensation process. An easy graphical dashboard approach will give you the big picture of where you are vs. your budget.
beqom has been working with the world's largest organizations on compensation and performance challenges for more than a decade, so we know what makes them tick. But we also know that every HR team has different needs and different styles that can't be answered by any one-size-fits-all product. Speak to a total compensation expert one-on-one today.
