Corporate – International Human Resources

International Human Resource Administration Solutions
Our Atlanta and UK practice has dedicated international human resource professionals who can provide significant value added services. In addition to the services previously mentioned, the outline below describes the typical services provided to an International Assignment Administration engagement. These services can be expanded or contracted to meet your company’s specific needs.

Pre-Departure Services generally encompasses services for short term, long term, or permanent transfer assignees. Such services are typically related to or provided to an assignee that is about to begin an assignment. This service may include:

• Preparation of Assignment Cost Projection
• Preparation of Assignment Letter/Contract
• Balance Sheet/Compensation Package
• Coordination of vendor services both internal and external: immigration, tax, travel coordination, pre-assignment trip, temporary housing, destination services, assignee shipping, storage, property management, cross-cultural, and/or language training.
• Assignee IHR Orientations
• Totalization Agreement Applications
• Split Pay Consultations
• Coordination with Internal and External Resources

Ongoing Administration Support generally encompasses services for short term or long term assignees.

Such services are typically related to or provided to an assignee that is on active assignment. This service may include:

• Calculation and communication of all ongoing assignment allowance updates (COLA, housing, transportation, etc.)
• Coordination of education, transportation, tax, and other one-off payments, advances, and invoices
• Coordination of vendor services both internal and external: tax, immigration, property management, storage and data
• Advise on proper reporting of non-periodic payments
• On-Going Assignee Support
• Prepare Assignment Management Reports such as: assignee costs estimates, costs by compensation or allowance item across all assignees, costs incurred per vendor, assignee demographic data, tax liabilities, policy exceptions

Year-end Compensation Reporting, as necessary for short term, long term, or permanent transfer assignees.

Such services are typically provided to home and host country payroll teams where an assignee’s assignment affects any given reporting year. This service may include:

• Collect assignee compensation data on a worldwide basis
• Year-End Summaries
• Collect final year compensation data on a worldwide basis
• Prepare final year compensation summary

Repatriation / Localization Services generally encompass services for short term, long term, or permanent transfer assignees. Such services are typically related to or provided to an assignee whose assignment is ending. This service may include:

• Track Completed Assignments
• Coordinate Repatriation
• Coordinate repatriation planning with the company’s IA Manager

The final or rather the first component of a successful International Assignment Administration Program is the transition and implementation phase. Transition and Implementation will vary based on program size and scope of services.

Our ability to implement a transition plan will be critical to the program’s overall success. We will work closely with you to develop a well-orchestrated transition and implementation plan as well as minimize any disruption to your current operations during this transition. This plan will carefully detail the processes, roles and responsibilities of those involved in the transition and implementation to ensure a clear understanding of the steps and timeline involved. It will also outline a strategy and approach for communicating the service changes to all those affected and involved.

We estimate that this work should begin two to four weeks before services for the assignees are initiated. The implementation timeframe can be adjusted (accelerated/decelerated) based on your company’s specific needs and requirements.

James D. Smith leads our international assignment administration solutions group and has had significant experience in helping companies address their needs in this area. In addition to the consulting assistance James has provided to various companies, he has significant on-the-ground experience especially through his former role as the outsourced international human resource manager for a large international telecommunications company which, he created expatriate assignment policies and procedures from scratch, identified program costs of $60 million and introduced significant cost reduction measures for a program of more than 200 assignees.

For a more detailed description of what these services entail, please contact James D. Smith at James.Smith@GEMMS.us