What is a Global Payroll Solution?
Today, businesses of all sizes have started employing remote employees from all over the world. However, the difficulty is in managing global payroll with all the compliances in put in practice.
Global payroll includes much more than just processing employee paychecks. Your global payroll system is more of a strategic asset than an administrative one, since it enables you to employ and pay top people globally quickly, simply, and in complete compliance.
However, not all global payroll suppliers can efficiently perform this function. Companies unfamiliar with global payroll may realize the numerous compliance, taxes, and other difficulties that may be resolved by global payroll solutions.
For instance, if a company does not have a legal entity in a country from where it wants to hire a great talent, a global payroll provider can allow the company to onboard and pay remote employees without setting up a legal entity in that country. That too, fully compliant and agile way.
Why international businesses need global payroll solutions?
External Benefits
Rapid international expansion
Today’s globalization era is fueled by technology. Companies are growing continuously and expanding in international markets. It can be a very difficult and expensive task for them to set up new entities and place local dedicated processes in advance before they start operations in a particular country. Finding the right partner for your business needs can include a process of research, troubleshooting, and analyzing your exact expectations from the platform. International payroll solutions offer faster hiring and same-day onboarding for new employees. This is useful when you are adding new employees each week and the management needs to get insights into their data
Compliance
Integrated reports and real-time dashboard metrics can help you track and regulate your payments. This will ensure local compliance and free you of regulation liabilities.
Scalability
Businesses have the opportunity to grow and scale internationally every year and in turn, need to hire more employees. Features like consistent and accurate reports, online payslip generation, and integration for accounting functions assist in scaling your remote payroll as your business grows.
Internal benefits
Process automation
Let's be realistic, payroll processes are outdated and are still being managed via Emails and spreadsheets. A global payroll service can integrate your entire payroll information on their platform. This can save you the slow and tenacious process of finding local vendors who have the technology to do this for you. For example- Why would you invest in developing 20 different employee portals for taxes and salary slips for 20 different countries. You can pay for one service to do this for you.
Payroll leakage
Payroll management also has its fair share of misdemeanors. Employees try to take advantage of the manual payroll system every day. They submit false timesheets, expense claims, and forged data to cheat the system. Payroll leakages happen every day and are a major problem for HR departments everywhere. Deloitte estimated that payroll leakage can account for almost 2.5% of total labor costs. A global payroll solution that gives you full control of your payroll and tracks key insights can help you lower the chances of fraud and leakage.
Flexibility
An international payroll service can contribute to the expansion lifecycle of your business. Flexible pay and HR solutions can ensure faster adaptability to your business’s expansion lifecycle.
Efficiency
Intelligent AI helps you manage payroll by measuring relevant KPIs such as performance measurement, turnover costs, the average time to solve employee issues, etc. This will ensure you key insights into your HR function and help improve overall business efficiency.
Working from home avoids commuting, and fewer commuters result in
lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Global Payroll Solutions - How it works?
Global payroll solutions use sophisticated AI-driven platforms to manage the payroll process for you in any corner of the world. Their accounting, finance, tax, and HR capabilities make them the number one solution for any company looking to expand globally.
A global payroll service provider can do much more than just manage transactional processes.
Let’s explore.
Seamless integration
Data-driven dashboards and metrics help you integrate all your payroll data in one place. It will give you better insights and control over your employee's information and payroll. They can help you integrate time and employee management to ensure the least errors in the data processing.
Taxes and compliance
A company has to comply with a new set of laws and regulations every time they hire an employee from a new country. These laws include local labor laws, local taxes, and employee classification rules. Failing to comply with these laws as per the country’s norms may lead to audits and fines from regulating bodies. A global payroll provider will help you pay all your employees in multiple countries taking care of local laws and compliance on their end.
Multiple currencies
A global payroll provider can help you pay in many currencies to employees in different geographies. Organizations do not need to worry about currency exchange rates, accepted modes of payment, and bank fees.
Real-time transparency
Maintaining payroll is generally a cumbersome task with loads of data processing to be done for insights on your employee payments. An international payroll service can help you with more efficient data processing and generate detailed reports for all key metrics that matter to your business. It makes sure your employees are happy with timely payments and HR managers can track these payments in real-time.
Data Security
There has been a drastic increase in the number of data security breaches in major companies all over the world. The security of employee data is a major concern when choosing a global payroll solution for your business. International payroll services follow global regulations for data protection like GDPR so that the data is secure and handled responsibly.
Questions to ask yourself before choosing a Global payroll solution.
1. What countries do they have offices in?
It is important to define your service requirements to the payroll service and check how many countries they can provide you the service. This might depend on your company’s future expansion strategy or the type of employee you are looking for. Skuad’s EOR platform can help you hire in over 160+ countries and in more than 100+ currencies.
2. Do I need to switch during a new payroll cycle or can we switch mid-year?
A mid-year switch at the start of the third quarter of the year (starting 1st July) is the best. It is also the most cost-effective time to switch your payroll service providers. One or two months into the second quarter is the time for businesses to identify and cut costs and payroll is the easiest cost to manipulate. Mid-year switch can also help you avoid some serious tax headaches. Consult your new payroll service to understand how they will deal with your unpaid taxes if you switch mid-year.
3. What security features do they have to protect employee data?
- Infrastructure in isolated networks with audit access
- Advanced firewalls for data protection and security
- Regular security audits and updates on the platform
- Access permission manager with layers.
- 2 Factor authentication for login of employees
- Daily backups of all data into cloud servers with protection
Conclusion
The intervention of technology can bring a tectonic shift in how businesses carry out their operations. This helps in driving better financial and experiential outcomes. This is what Skuad’s Global Payroll solution truly does. It modernizes how HR departments manage payroll tasks and allows them to truly focus on employees.
Skuad’s global HR and payroll platform takes away the pain from global payroll management and takes care of onboarding, taxes, and compliance for all your employees. Speak to Skuad’s talent experts to see how our global payroll solution can transform your business.
FAQs on Global Payroll
1. How do US companies pay their overseas staff?
Though companies in the US can make direct payments to overseas contractors, they cannot do so for remitting direct overseas employees. Also, payment of salaries to overseas employees is more cumbersome. In this case, companies can either establish up their own legal organizations in the countries where workers work, or they can sign-up for a global employer of record services.
2. How to set up salary payments for overseas employees?
In contrast to domestic employees, who may get their salary with relative ease, employees in other countries require greater care. For this, you must account for payments to social programmes, such as social security and pension funds, as well as employer taxes and statutory benefits. Many growth hungry organizations that wish to engage overseas employees utilize global payroll solutions.
3. How to structure a competitive salary package for overseas employees?
The answer to this question depends on the global compensation and benefits policies of the hiring company. Some companies give everyone the same compensation regardless of location. Others account for variables such as the cost of living. In most situations, companies employing in other geographies pay their international employees compensation comparable to those in the region where they live.
4. Which local regulation applies? Location of hiring company’s or employees’?
Typically, the answer is both. However, your entity should already comply with the regulations of the region in which they headquartered it. To employ people in other countries, you must adhere to the cross-border regulations of your country. It is crucial to take compliance seriously since various nations have varying levels of worker rights, different standards for businesses, and varied consequences for rule violations.