Going Global With Your HRIS

Why go global?

If you manage your business on a global basis, then there is a payoff to managing your employees the same way. Suppose your firm is planning to construct a new oil well on a deep-ocean platform somewhere in the Atlantic. The firm is based in the US, but has operations in dozens of countries. This new project will be managed by staff in the US and include internal experts from many other countries to implement various aspects of the work. The project will take several years to complete and involve millions of dollars in employee costs. Here are some of the ways a global HRIS can help you manage the project:

• Search for the best-qualified employees to serve on the team, regardless of what country they are in (Qualifications & Requirements)

• Fill vacancies by recruiting the best resources from multiple countries (Recruitment)

• Easily assign employee costs to the new project or cost center and have all payroll-related charges allocated to it (Organization Management and Payroll)

• Enable time-saving workflow processes that eliminate international paper-shuffling (Workflow)

• Provide integrated managerial reporting on the organization and employees in it (Managers Desktop)
  

If you don't manage your business or projects globally, take another look. As companies grow, they often find that ‘global’ work is being done; they just don’t have the visibility to identify, track, and manage it. Without a formal system in place, good managers will do what it takes to get the job done the best way possible – and that may mean they make their own, informal global connections for resourcing and managing a project.

Benefits of going global

The monetary benefits of a global HRIS, like a good domestic HRIS, are difficult to quantify. An HRIS that is implemented well becomes central to how a firm operates, but it does so in the background. It is more of an enabler than an up-and-front business tool. But even though it may be in the background, it can amplify HR management’s contribution to the firm’s bottom-line.

To see the benefits of a global HRIS, don’t think too much of country-specific processes. If you were to survey your HR business processes across all the countries you operate, you would most likely find that 80% of them are the same around the world. The other 20% are due to country-specific reporting, regulations and so on. So, focus on applying core HRIS capabilities on a standard, consistent basis around the world:

• Apply consistent standards for reporting and data management: Global data models and process standards are the bedrock of a global HRIS. Remember the 80/20 rule.
  

• Qualifications and Requirements: Apply a consistent process for capturing and maintaining employee qualifications; use the HRIS for managing your employee training.

• Reporting: Everyone gets the same consistent view of employee-related information.
  

• Compensation Management: Apply fair, or be aware of local differences in compensation for similar jobs in various countries.
  

• Succession Planning: The right person to fill the job may be an expatriate.
  

• Cost Planning: Pull together costs for a department or project regardless of the countries involved.
  

Once you have the core HRIS implemented around the world, you can continue to leverage it. With all employee data in one system you can more effectively manage additional employee-related processes:

• Payroll: Once you have the employee data in place, develop a standard payroll implementation template (the 80/20 rule also applies to payroll)
  

• Stock option and other compensation programs: With all employee data in one system, tracking grants and exercises is much easier, and with global payroll it is even better.
  

• Simplified expatriate management and processing: Again, if all employees are in the HRIS, expatriate management is more straightforward.
  

Issues of going global

It’s not too hard to see the benefits of a global HRIS, but implementing it is where most people encounter difficulty. Implementing a domestic HRIS is hard enough, but when you throw additional countries into the mix it is even more problematic. There are many issues, but the more common are:

• Technical issues: Multiple code pages for supporting double-byte character sets; WAN availability, cost and bandwidth
  

• Implementation: Obtaining local country consulting/implementation expertise for the 20% of the 80/20 can be difficult
  

• Maintenance: More complicated process for testing and applying system updates/upgrades – around the clock operations and different timing for country-specific regulatory updates.
  

• Standards; Determining what HR data and processes are important to standardize on a global basis takes more time and effort than planned.
  

• System capabilities: The software vendor may not support all the countries you need – it will take time and effort to develop work-arounds.
  

Perhaps more important than all these issues is the level of executive management support for a global HRIS effort. Managers who are accountable for global businesses must support the global HRIS effort, and they will support it if they see the benefits. If these managers can not see the benefits, then the implementation will either fail or not produce the expected benefit.

In addition to executive managers supporting the project, HR must also build into the business some features that more or less force individual countries to use the system. For example, HR is often the source of head-count reporting – if you make the new HRIS the official source of that reporting then individual countries have a reason to at least maintain some employee data correctly. The specific ways that a company supports or requires the use of a global HRIS depends on how it operates. But the benefits are usually the same – an organization that can truly leverage its human assets around the world to become more competitive and profitable.