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Managing an Supporting International Assignments – Chapter 6
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Consistent with over all strategy
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Must attract and retain staff
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Facilitate transfer of international employees
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Financial protection (benefits,social security,living costs in a foreign country)
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Assignment to offer opportunities for financial advancement (income/savings) www.company.com
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Issues like housing, education, recreation policies to be addressed by the company

Company
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Managing an Supporting International Assignments – Chapter 6
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• Serves as benchmark for primary components of package – foreign service premium, costof-living, housing allowance
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Basis for in-service benefits and pension contributions
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May be paid in home or local currency www.company.com

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• Salary premium as an inducement or as
Compensation for any hardship caused by transfer
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More commonly paid to TCNs than PCNs
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Made in the form of percentage of salary (5-
40% of base pay)
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Differentials are considered (eg. Host country work week and hence over time)

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• Cost of Living Allowance
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Difference on expenditure between home and foreign country
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Help of specialized organizations like
‘Organization Resource Counsellors’
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Includes Payment of housing, utilities, personal income tax etc.

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• Housing Allowance
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To enable maintenance of home country living standards
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Company provided houses, fixed HRA
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Assistance in sale or leasing of residence, payment of closing costs, rent protection, equity protection etc.

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• Home Leave Allowance (one or more trips to back home to prevent adjustment problems)
• Education Allowance (language tuition,children education)
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Relocation Allowance ( moving, shipping, temporary living, purchase of car etc.
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Spouse assistance (an allowance to make up for the spouse’s lost income)

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• Maintaining expatriates in home country programs in case of no tax deductions
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Option of enrolling expatriates in host country benefits and/or making up for any difference
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Home country v/s Host country social security benefits

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Managing an Supporting International Assignments – Chapter 6
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Company
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• Based on Local Market Rates
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Relies on Survey Comparisons among:
– Local nationals (HCNs)
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Expatriates of same nationality
– Expatriates of all nationalities
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Compensation based on the selected survey comparison
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Additional Payments for low-pay countires

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DISADVANTAGES
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Variation between assignments for same employee
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Variation between expatriates of same nationality in different countries
• Potential re-entry problems
ADVANTAGES
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Equality with local nationals
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Simplicity
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Identification with host country
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Equity amongst different nationalities

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According to Reynolds..
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The balance sheet approach to international compensation is a system designed to equalize the purchasing power of employees at comparable position levels living overseas and in the home country , and to provide incentives to offset the qualitative differences between assignment locations.
• Assumption : Foreign assignees should not suffer a material loss due to their transfer www.company.com

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• Most common system used by multinational firms
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Objective: maintenance of home country living standard + financial inducement
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Focus on home country pay and benefits
• Adjustments to balance additional expenditure in host country
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Financial incentives(expatriate/hardship premium) added to make package attractive

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• Major categories of outlays
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Goods and Services : home country outlays for food, personal care , clothing, household furnishings , recreation, transportation, medical care
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Housing : cost associated in host country
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Income taxes: parent country and host country income taxes
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Reserve: contribution to savings, payments for benefits, pension contributions, investments, education expenses, social security taxes etc. www.company.com

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• Advantages
– Equity
• Between
Assignments
• Between expatriates of the same nationality
– Facilitates expatriate reentry
– Easy to communicate to employees
• Disadvantages
– Can result in great disparities
• Between expatriates of different nationalities
• Between expatriates and local nationals
– Can be complex to administer

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Problems , Issues and Challenges
– Dual tax cost : Expatriates paying taxes in both home and host country.
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Need to consider personal and corporate taxes in addition to income tax
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Modifying compensation packages to provide the most tax-effective, appropriate rewards within the overall compensation framework

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Whether or not to maintain expatriates in home country programs, particularly if the company does not receive tax deduction for it
– Whether companies have the option of enrolling expatriates in host-country benefit programs and
/or making up any difference in coverage
– Whether host-country legislation regarding termination affects benefit entitlement

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Whether expatriates should receive home country or host country social security benefits
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Whether benefits should be maintained on home country or host country basis, who is responsible for the cost, whether other benefits should be used to offset any shortfall and whether home country benefit programs should be exported to local nationals in foreign countries

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Tax equalization
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Firms withhold an amount equal to home country tax obligation, and pay all taxes in the host country
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By far the more common taxation policy used by multinationals
– Tax payments equal to liability of home country tax payer with same income and family status are imposed on employee’s salary and bonus
– Additional premiums or allowances are paid tax free

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Tax protection
– Employee pays up to the amount of taxes he or she would pay on compensation in the home country
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Employee is entitled to any windfall received if total taxes are less in the host country than in the home country
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Ad-hoc
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Each expatriate handled differently , depending upon individual package agreed to with the firm
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Laissez Faire
– Employees are ‘on their own’ in conforming to host-country and home country taxation laws and practices

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Obtaining upto-date information on international living costs is a constant issue for MNEs
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The MNEs take the services of consulting firms
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These firms conduct regular surveys calculating a cost-of-living index that is updated in terms of currency exchange rates
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This data is a very important issue to expatriate employees and forms the basis of many complaints if there are updating lags on compensation package rise

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• MNEs must also respond to unexpected events such as currency and stock market crash. For eg (Asian crisis)
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Such events have a dramatic impact on prices and the cost of living
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MNEs must also decide what to include in the
‘basket-of-goods’ which the consulting firms use to decide the living costs

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• Another option is to look at wider Business
Costs rather than living costs for expatriates
• The Economist calculates such indices which measure the costs of doing business in different economies – wages, air travel costs, taxes, perceived corruption levels
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Generally, developed countries tend to rank more expensive because of their wage costs

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• Balance Sheet approach : Salary according to
Home-country base salary
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Balance sheet approach is most commonly used for TCN which is the basis for differentiation between TCN & PCN
• However, as firms expand internationally, it is likely that TCN employees will become more valuable and firms may need to rethink their approach to compensating TCNs

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• MNE firms need to match their compensation policies with their staffing policies and general HR philosophy.
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Eg: If firm has an ethnocentric staffing policy, its compensation policy should be such that
TCNs’ and PCNs’ salaries are relative.
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Tentative Conclusions: Patterns in complexity
• Global pay issues have found to operate in three different levels:
– Cultural values and assumptions
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Level of pay strategy, practices and systems design
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Level of pay administration and form www.company.com

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Universal Pay Level Local
•Firm
•Nation
•Group
•Job
•Person