Managing international leave compliance is becoming a bigger headache for growing global organizations. If your organization operates internationally, you’re challenged to meet different local laws and regulations related to absence and leave entitlement rules. This becomes particularly difficult if you operate across different regions, expanding into new countries, or routinely move employees from one country to another.
But managing international leave compliance doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, with a few fundamental changes, the whole process can evolve to create a more positive experience for leadership, managers, and employees to ultimately drive productivity and support growth.
The Headaches are Real
When it comes to the world of work, no two countries do things in quite the same way. It’s not enough to just learn the language. You’ll also have to familiarise yourself with local customs, culture, and expectations concerning every aspect of the business.
And it doesn’t stop there. Every country in the world has its own set of employment laws and regulations and countries update these laws regularly, much like the recent changes to Czech Republic labour laws. So if you operate internationally, you can’t expect to get away with a one-size-fits-all absence policy. Instead, you’ll have to tailor your policy to meet the local laws and regulations of every country you operate in.
So is your absence policy flexible enough to meet the needs of global operations? According to one study, 85% of international companies believe a flexible HR department is a top priority for addressing emerging business priorities and achieving wider objectives.
For a brief insight into just how much employment law differs around the world, take a look at these rules in various countries and regions here.
In Hungary, holiday entitlement is determined by employee age. While in Brazil, occurrences of unplanned absences reduce the number of holidays an employee is entitled to. Some regions like North America have more open policies and have unique complexities on a business by a business case. In many Latin American countries, for example, employees legally accrue additional leave days depending on how long they spend in employment. A lot of rules to juggle and manage in a global organization.
So if you operate internationally, every single country poses a unique challenge – and it’s a challenge that you’ve no choice but to meet. The penalties for breaching employment law and compliance are harsh no matter where you go in the world. How employee data is managed adds another layer of complexity, with H&M fined 32 million Euros for mismanaging return to work information.
The Solution
You have to tailor your absence management policy to suit the local laws, regulations, and expectations of every country you work in. But this can be much easier than it seems…
If you want to successfully manage international leave compliance like Trimble, Syngenta, and Monster Energy, you just need the right system on your side. Such a system will make the whole process simple, streamlined, and automatic.
Trimble is now able to cater to each country’s individual absence rules seamlessly, ensuring local regulations are being followed with clear workforce visibility across the Netherlands, Romania, Germany, and more. You can read the full transformational success story here.
Edays is used in more than 300,000 employees in 120 countries and 20 different languages around the world. For every country you work in, we’ll build a solution from the ground up to meet your unique business requirements as well as the local statutory requirements.
Our solution seamlessly integrates with your existing HR and payroll systems. So you don’t have to worry about manually calculating holiday allowance and other statutory rights for every international employee. It’s flexible, it’s easy-to-manage, and it handles different compliance rules across the world automatically.
And best of all, our system won’t just help you stay compliant with international employment law. With accurate, powerful, and comprehensive reporting and insights we can help you spot emerging absence trends to make more strategic business decisions. We’ll also improve visibility and collaboration between your international teams, while a range of features will help drive a culture of wellbeing across your whole global organization.
Absence matters. Book a free demo to learn more about our world-class absence solution.
Harry is Head of Customer Success here at edays, helping organisations to get the very best out of their edays system. His experience in SaaS and HR brings valuable insight into how organisations can better manage their people, processes and productivity.