What is Foreign Employees Benefits and Compensation
Employee benefits are a key perk for attracting the best global talent, and for employee retention. They are an essential part of talent compensation packages.
When your home base and the location of your international employees are in different countries, you may need to juggle different sets of rules and regulations to handle international pay and employee benefits for your globally distributed workforce.
Beyond the minimum required by law, providing additional benefits can be key to employee retention in your company, and an attractive draw for top global talent.
At Acumen, we provide core global employment services in 190 countries, and we help you provide the best-matched benefits according to each country’s requirements and your business needs.
Provision of Mandatory Benefits
Many countries have mandatory benefits that you are obligated to provide to your international workforce. Lack of knowledge about statutory benefits is never an acceptable excuse for failing to provide them to foreign workers in a host country.
It is wise to trust an industry expert like Acumen International, to take care of tailored benefits and compensation programs for your international employees.
A foreign employee comp&ben package typically includes:
- Healthcare benefits for medical care in the destination country.
- Worker’s compensation benefits for financial protection if injured on the job.
- Unemployment Insurance to give workers a financial cushion if they lose their job.
- Housing allowances to help them find a place to live.
- Meal and travel vouchers for countries in Latin America and Asia.
- Cost of living adjustments to provide raises and additional compensation to account for inflation.
- Foreign service premiums, providing higher salaries to compensate for working internationally.
- Help with local taxes, so employees don’t need to learn local tax codes on their own.
Baseline requirements for employee benefits vary from one country to the next. Workers employed in countries with universal healthcare will not require health insurance benefits. However, if you have a globally distributed team, make sure their benefits package reflects the labor laws of the host country and also meets the employee’s expectations for what they should receive in their home country.
Additional Voluntary Benefits
Along with the statutory benefits, many leading companies voluntarily supply additional benefits to enhance talent retention. Global PEO companies have the capacity and expertise to supply perks along with compliant international onboarding. Some examples of voluntary benefits include:
- Retirement plans
- Spousal employment
- Compensation for meals and commutes
- Child care
- Annual bonuses
- Travel coverage
- Car leasing and fuel compensation
- Equipment provision (computers, smartphones)
- Business expense coverage
- Workplace wellness programs
How Acumen International’s global PEO solution can help in employee benefits administration?
While the options we’ve discussed above are some of the general benefits that get factored into global employer costs, there are some unique examples with regard to benefits across the globe:
- In the UAE, there was a law that obliged companies with expatriate workers to buy tickets to send their workers home, even after their contracts expire.
- In some countries like Thailand and the Philippines, 13/14 month salaries are a part of employee contracts, essentially meaning additional mandatory payments. By violating these norms, you may expose your company to risks of non-compliance.
- Manufacturing companies in India with over 100 workers need to give notice to the government prior to terminating a worker.
- Bulgarian employees are allowed to have up to 55 weeks of maternity leave, with 46 weeks being paid.
- Australian employees are allowed to use flexitime as well as accumulated overtime hours to offset their regular working hours.
It’s difficult for many companies to interpret additional employee benefits on their own, so it’s best to hire professionals like Acumen International who already know the industry specifics inside out trends looking ahead. Follow the link below to see how your company can adapt moving forward and choose the optimal compensation mechanisms.
Along with our core Express Global Employment solution for remote workers onboarding, at Acumen, we also help with payroll and rewards for your offshore teams.
The expertise and coverage in over 190 countries make us the perfect fit for time-critical scenarios:
- the need to deploy multiple teams;
- an urge to employ and compensate expatriates and local workers compliantly.
We can help supply healthcare benefits for cross-border employment or whatever added benefits required by local regulations.
In addition, as these requirements shift, our expertise allows us to keep you updated on how your overseas workforce can be appropriately rewarded. Save time on doing research and focus more on getting more important business tasks completed. With competent support, you can hire a global workforce and retain top talent globally. Reach out to us today!