Global Challenges Abound
HR and payroll departments within global consumer goods organizations that operate across multiple regions are keenly aware of the challenge of complying with country-specific business and regulatory requirements. They know that penalties for noncompliance can be severe. The situation becomes even more daunting when a company must roll up or consolidate its geographically dispersed data, as is often required when operating a global payroll process or HR-reporting function.
These capturing, tracking and reporting requirements can vary significantly from one locale to the next. For example, Germany has tracked religion to calculate burial costs while Singapore has tracked deductions based on race to assist low-income households. Employees in some places can receive more than 12 monthly payments. Japan has had multiple social security systems and there are several unique aspects of Nordic region taxation such as how holiday pay is earned. Also, gender pay gap reporting requirements took effect in the UK more than 5 years ago and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe required major changes in data handling. Therefore, maintaining compliance with the many local reporting and data tracking regulations means being able to understand and interpret data coming from different sources and systems.