Global Benefits Trend: Employers Moving Away from ExPat Hires and Toward Locally Appropriate Approach for Global Benefits

Global Benefits Trend: Employers Moving Away from ExPat Hires and Toward Locally Appropriate Approach for Global BenefitsAsinta Partners are more and more finding their multinational clients changing who they hire for management roles in offices outside their native country. The trend is to now hire locally for these roles, rather than opt for an ExPat solution.

In turn our Partners have also seen global clients applying a locally appropriate approach to benefit strategy more than ever before. However, this approach creates unique benefit challenges for global benefits managers.

Challenges with the Locally Appropriate Approach

This approach means that a country specific benefit package is designed locally to match local legal requirements and employee expectations. It is typically the most cost effective options, but it can bring challenges including:

  • Finding a local advisor you can trust – A trusted advisor will ensure you get the appropriate benchmark data, keep you up to speed on legislative changes, expertly guide you through local benefits, and will communicate all this information in a way that is contextually relevant to you.
  • Sourcing quality benchmarking data – Make sure you know the benefit norms in the countries where you have employees and also remember to ask open ended questions about the data you receive.
  • Buying benefits for small groups can be difficult – If you have less than 50 employees in a local office you can have trouble purchasing certain benefits in certain countries. If this is the case you can consider pooling or perhaps buying a global policy.
  • Benefits can grow in scope or ‘creep’ – Local offices may extend benefits and pay about the norm and closer to head office benefits.
  • Increased administrative complexity with privacy regulations (GDPR for example) – Consider how you manage your data centrally and the role a coordinating adviser could play for you.

Asinta Partners specialize in solving all these challenges, and if you have questions about your global employee benefits program our Partners can help. Send your global benefits questions to us and we’ll put you in touch with the appropriate Asinta Partner.