Our focus for this session was roundtable discussions around the following topics:

• The balance between managing costs and providing attractive packages: How to retain talent but ensure benefits are not out of the market?
• Changing reward and incentive practices globally and the interaction with your Mobility Policies.
• Compliance challenges in relation to reporting and tax remittances for incentives provided to mobile employees – consideration of both share-based incentives and cash incentives.
•  Reward vs. entitlement – with the increase in Permanent Transfer arrangements, what policies and practices are common in relation to leave entitlements which may apply in the home country but would not apply in the host country.
• Exploring the common approaches to compensation design for LTAs/ STAs and how this may change in the next five to ten years.
•  Consideration that needs to be given to remuneration reporting requirements for Senior Executives on assignments.

The KPMG Gap survey was referenced.

Potential changes as well as managing costs associated with each organisations Assignment Policy Framework was discussed within each table group and summarised for the room at large.  What was clear was that a number of organisations were facing similar challenges. Flexible assignment policies were being implemented but no-one was really measuring the comparative value of benefits from the perspective of  their assignee population. Something that may be worth considering.

Fewer organisations were substantially differentiating between employee and employer initiated moves.  Flexibility, particularly with respect to identified Talent was obvious.

An important question that needs further consideration and certainly created talk was - Is your organisation currently looking at what is the driver for the assignment when developing assignment packages? How may this be changing in the next 5 years? Especially if we consider that assignment failure is a significant static even in developed countries (according to the latest Int’l SOS survey).

Some additional questions raised included (had time permitted they could have been sessions on their own):

• How often is your organisation benchmarking the benefits provided to mobile employees in each location?

• When you are putting together an assignment package for an employee going on assignment, do you obtain data at that point to show what should be the relevant cost for benefits such as housing? 

• What assignment costing projection tools are you currently using? 

• What challenges have your organisations experienced when it comes to reporting and tax remittance requirements for your incentives- both share-based and cash based incentives.

• Do you currently use technology to assist in completing sourcing calculations to ensure the correct amounts are being reported and the correct taxes being remitted in each Country and State where the employee has worked during the performance period?

• If your organisations position is not to factor this in – i.e. the employee will be subject to all leave entitlements based on their employment location where they are transferring to - are you providing the employees with enough information so that they are aware of the differences?

• As part of your transfer policy, are pension entitlements or contributions addressed?

• Have you developed adequate internal checklists to ensure that any leave payouts are appropriately addressed at the time of transfer?