When it comes to expanding your business abroad, there are a lot of decisions and changes to be made. One of themis switching to an international payroll. The benefits of international payroll services are huge, but that’s not to say there are no potential risks involved.
Here are some of the most common mistakes and hurdles businesses encounter when implementing global payroll, and how to avoid them – because it can be easily done with some upfront preparation and foresight.
Sorting out local payroll operations
When expanding into international market, global payrolls help streamline the entire operation – but first, you need to ensure that your existing, local process and operations are running as smoothly as possible. If this involves several operations at regional levels, you’ll need to ensure you understand how they work together, and that, individually, there are no cuts that can be made to save on cost.
Compliance mistakes
If you’re looking to take your business international, compliance is one of the most important parts of the process, and global payrolls are no exception. Getting compliance wrong runs the risk of fines and legal costs.
Your global payroll, therefore, shouldn’t risk a lack of compliance in the countries you’re operating in, so you must ensure your providers can ensure full compliance. One of the biggest compliance challenges is taxes, but there are many more, too, such as overtime rules and payslip requirements, for example. And these will differ massively form one country to another.
Forgetting privacy laws
When it comes to global payroll systems, privacy laws are not to be underestimated. Given just a few personal details, hackers can go after payroll records by hijacking a digital identity. Therefore, organisations are coming to realize they need even tougher data protection requirements.
All over the world, data protection regulations are being developed and existing laws are being tightened, as hacking methods become ever more sophisticated and companies are required to keep one step ahead of the game and fight back.
And these protections and laws differ massively from country to country, so depending where your business operates from, you’ll need to ensure you’re on top of these. You must get to grips with how these strict data privacy rules will impact your organisation, and how you can keep on top of them.
Optimizing global processes versus local flexibility
In order to achieve success, global businesses must ensure they have a good balance between optimizing their global system and keeping a healthy level of flexibility at local level. A super-efficient global payroll system is great, but not so effective if things at local levels are disorganised, or massively fluctuating, and operators have to spend a lot of time working outside the system. Therefore, ensure there are enough employees dedicated to the smooth running of both local and global operations.
There are many, many other common mistakes to avoid when implementing a global payroll system and going international. International expansion requires a lot of time, effort and decision-making, and some companies prefer to go to experts for advice on international expansion.
