The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has meant organisations have had to deliver increasingly individualised and time-sensitive support to their global employees.
With countries’ lockdown rules and border restrictions changing all the time, mobility teams have had to work hard and fast to adapt and meet the needs of deployed talent. While some workers have been unable to return from foreign countries, others have been stopped from leaving their home countries, and still others have wanted to repatriate from abroad as soon as possible.
This raised challenges for mobility teams, including quickly arranging extensions to temporary housing, providing additional allowances and staying up to date with tax and immigration filings.
Mobility teams have never been busier and many have realised the shortcomings of their manual processes and legacy systems. Going forward, the right modern technology can help organisations cope with the changing business and political environment and ensure the wellbeing of their employees.
In my last blog post, I wrote about how automation and agility were particularly essential for meeting the needs of today’s global workforces.
Technology can also help with yet another of today’s challenges: managing the complex compliance obligations and ongoing costs of providing mobility support in such an uncertain and unpredictable time.
Simplify compliance and cost management
Keeping track of all costs incurred or expensed through vendor partners is one way to help mobility teams manage compliance risks. Authorities will expect organisations to report benefits-in-kind, with in-year payroll withholding applied. For many teams, it’s hard enough managing these obligations during more stable times when policy parameters are clear – but during the pandemic, when mobility has had to act swiftly, compliance has not always been front of mind.
Mobility technology systems provide immediate and robust solutions for these compliance issues. For instance, initiating vendor services through a mobility platform, as you can with Equus’ AssignmentPro global mobility software, ensures that a service order record is immediately linked to an assignment case. This provides all stakeholders – employees, business managers and the mobility team – with real-time visibility into the status of services. Vendor invoices can then be reconciled in the mobility platform against the order, even for out-of-scope service quotations.
Once approved, the costs can be sent directly to payroll to be processed and reported in real time. AssignmentPro, for example, provides the business with live dashboards that show accurate and up-to-date vendor costs and any subsequent gross-up tax liabilities for easy budgeting and accruals.
Similarly, a modern mobility platform should enable mobility teams to initiate one-off allowances or other monetary payments and send them directly into payroll for processing and collation into earnings statements.
Ensuring the ongoing safety and welfare of deployed talent during the pandemic required mobility teams’ full attention. As teams face continued uncertainty ahead, the right mobile technology can allow organisations to continue to provide excellent support to mobile workers while also managing compliance risks and ongoing costs.
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