America's Benefit Specialist May 2023

GLOBAL-READY HR SYSTEMS

Familiarize yourself with the global platforms available and determine which ones you are comfortable recom mending to clients. There are many companies on the market that claim to be global workforce-management solutions. The reality is that a lot of companies overpromise and underdeliver when it comes to user functionality, especially around payroll. Brokers need a resource they can trust in order to be true advisors to clients and prospects. As demand for global payroll has increased over the last few years, many companies have attempted to develop a solution. In many cases, these third-party vendors manually enter clients’ data or make manual changes. After each pay run, they download reports and ship that data back to the client, which can lead to a whole host of issues and inconsis tencies that create more work for clients. These vendors are payroll aggregators. Your clients need a truly native global payroll system. As a trusted advisor, it’s important to recommend resources that reduce workload for your clients, and with so many re sources on the market, it’s challenging to distinguish between solutions that make false claims about their effectiveness and those that are genuinely effective. There are several important factors to consider when evaluating global vendors: Functionality: Global workforce-management platforms make a big claim, but can they deliver? When demoing, ask questions about the mechanics of their tools. Chances are if they don’t have good answers, they don’t have good prod ucts. Trust your gut and experience here. All-in-one: Global resources should manage as many parts of a global workforce experience as possible. Can they handle more than payroll, like ben-admin, reporting, HRIS, compli ance and time tracking? Ideally, the client can use one plat form for its international and global employees as opposed to multiple platforms that don’t integrate with each other and create more administrative work for the client. Reviews: Feedback from real clients is invaluable when evaluating vendors and solutions. I recommend resources like G2 Crowd, Software Advice and Capterra to determine the trustworthiness of a vendor. Your own experience: How a vendor treats you is how they’ll treat your clients. Do you feel good about the response time? Can you trust your representative? Do they make you feel valued? The software you refer to is a direct reflection of your own service so it’s important to find a resource you can trust and feel comfortable recommending. Giving clients tools that actually work and make a difference in their day-to-day is the best way to stand out in a competitive market.

Become a surface-level pro on what a client needs for global workforce management. It will never be your job to solve every problem a client’s HR team has, especially when it comes to global hiring. While you don’t need to have all the answers, you should have a surface-level understanding of their issues and a list of rec ommendations. Clients will face a variety of issues around global hiring depending on their stage of global growth. Here’s how to approach navigating resources for global employee manage ment for the most common global expansion scenarios: EOR: Best for new-to-global clients looking to make their first hire. An employer-of-record tool handles payroll, benefits, taxes and local compliance, and will give clients a hands-off approach to hiring abroad without creating an additional workload. Own entity: It’s important to note that payroll and hiring tools available in the U.S. are different than what is available overseas. Clients with an established global presence will benefit most from consolidating their U.S. and international payroll. I also recommend HRIS, T&A and Finance in the same platform to simplify workflows for clients at any stage of global expansion. You don’t need to know everything about managing a global workforce, but having access to the resources that fit a client’s needs will go a long way in positioning yourself as a trusted advisor and being able to win new groups. Look for a platform that can do both so you don’t have to choose. Solve global problems for clients. You want to stand out from the competition so you can meet your bottom line. Having global tools at your disposal allows you to do just that. Let me walk you through how I just recently saw a broker use global offerings to win a client: • The broker quoted a 350-employee prospect. The client mentioned it was planning on expanding its existing UK workforce but price was the group’s number-one concern given today’s economy. • After seconds of discovery, the broker learned the client was struggling to manage international onboarding. The group also wanted to manage payroll in one system. • The broker made the best global recommendation he could think of, and the client was impressed at the broker’s effort. • The broker won the group by providing a solution for a problem most brokers won’t even talk about. While this is just one example, it’s not unique to this broker. I talk to brokers every week who have clients with problems they can’t solve. Being able to connect a client to a solution Continued on page 36

34 ABS | benefitspecialistmagazine.com