HRO Today Global Winter 2016 - 8

HR Predictions
Mobility
and the company can avoid the taxation issues that vary
from the origin country. "
George Bates, senior vice president of global marketing
and sales at Graebel Relocation Services Worldwide,
predicts that more companies in 2016 will seek to
" localize " their employees on long-term overseas
assignments, for both cost- and worker-satisfactionrelated
reasons.
A couple of decades back, most businesses simply sent
an executive and his or her family on an expatriate
assignment to Asia-Paciÿ c and gave them all of the
same beneÿ ts the employee enjoyed domestically.
" Companies increasingly are seeing and seizing
greater cost efÿ ciencies by making the person a local
employee, " Bates says. " This is the biggest trend in
employee mobility, with some carryover from 2015.
Research into our client base indicates that 64 percent
of companies are doing this now to control their costs. "
For some companies, the tax savings from localizing the
worker can be as much as 25 percent, depending on the
region.
" The legalities vary on a country-by-country basis, and
it is important not to play too close to the risks and
compliance issues, " Bates says. " Nevertheless, this is
a big movement; eight percent of companies localize
people who are already on assignment, particularly
those employees and their families who really want to
stay in that country. "
The good news for these employees is that the same
beneÿ ts and compensation they received in the U.S. will
be provided on foreign assignment.
A related trend is the revival of GECs (Global
Employment Companies) to further simplify the
relocation process. With increasing globalization,
many businesses are sending employees on long-term
assignments to multiple countries and moving them
every two or three years.
" By forming a GEC with the headquarters located
somewhere like Ireland, employees work for the GEC
and receive the same package of compensation and
beneÿ ts wherever they go in the world, " Bates says.
" This provides real parity for all the global assignees,
[8]
HRO TODAY GLOBAL
| WINTER 2016
Learning and Development
Dave Letts, vice president of Raytheon Professional
Services, and Edward Trolley, senior vice president,
consulting and advisory services, at NIIT (USA), Inc.,
provided their views on the big movements taking
place in employee learning and development (L&D).
Both interviewees perceive a sharper focus on training,
especially as many companies hire fewer people for their
resumes and speciÿ c skill sets and more people for their
cultural ÿ t.
In this quest, Letts says that big data will play a larger
role going forward to help business leaders map
learning data to organizational performance.
" Nearly half of all learning organizations are using both
HR and business data in their analytics, but most of
these organizations don't know how to harness data to
show the impact of learning on business results, " Letts
says. " When used effectively, data analytics can improve
learning effectiveness, increase employee engagement
and retention, and demonstrate impact on revenue. "
The challenge in many companies is the continuing need
to reduce costs, which often takes an ax to training
programs. In this environment, Trolley predicts that
more businesses will turn to L&D outsourcing.
" This is particularly true in Europe, where many
companies are facing a challenging economy, " he says.
" They're looking more closely at how outsourcing can
help them reduce training costs. "
With cost pressures rising, training organizations will be
under more pressure to deliver measurable value in the
coming year, the experts say. " It is no longer acceptable
for training organizations to operate without being
held accountable to the same expectations of a return
on investment as any other part of the company, "
Trolley asserts. " As they respond to the mandate of
dramatically improving effectiveness and efÿ ciency,
many transformations will take place within training
organizations over the next 12 months. "
HRO Today Global Winter 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of HRO Today Global Winter 2016
