Kiara Moreau· Compensation Consultant, Nordvik Energy
Posted in Global & Mobility ·
I have run mobility programmes for 20 years, currently at an engineering consultancy with about 220 assignees. I think the profession keeps the home-based balance sheet as a default out of habit.
It was built for a senior employee sent abroad for three years with a non-working spouse and children. Last year 58% of our moves were people under 35, half of them single, and a third had asked to go. For them we were calculating housing norms, goods and services differentials and hypothetical tax to deliver a package they neither understood nor valued.
We now use it for under a quarter of moves. The rest get local pay plus a transparent set of time-limited supports. I am interested in where people think the balance sheet still earns its keep.
6 helpful · 4 insightful · 2 agree · 6 replies · 290 views · 6 following
Compensation Consultant, Tidewater Utilities
It earns its keep wherever you are asking someone to go somewhere they would not choose and you need them back. Our project directors going to sites in Kazakhstan, Mozambique or Papua New Guinea are not going on local pay plus a housing allowance. For developmental moves between London, Sydney and Toronto I agree entirely.
Maya ChenWWP
Compensation Manager, Halcyon Financial Group
Agree with the diagnosis, less with the cure. Local-plus looks simple until you move someone from a high-pay country to a low-pay one, or from a country with a strong state pension to one without. Then you rebuild the balance sheet through exceptions, only without the logic.
Maya ChenWWP
Compensation Manager, Halcyon Financial Group
The administrative cost argument is the strongest one. We costed our programme at about USD 9,000 a year per assignee in provider fees, data and tax compliance on the balance sheet, against about USD 3,500 on local-plus. With 150 assignees that funds a lot of flexibility.
Total Rewards Manager, Silverline Media
What nobody mentions is pensions. The balance sheet keeps people in their home plan. Our local-plus movers under 35 did not care at the time, and several are now discovering gaps of four or five years in their retirement savings. We have added a requirement to explain this in writing at the offer stage.
Benefits Analyst, Larkspur Manufacturing
A segmentation by who initiated the move and whether there is a return date covers most of it. Company-initiated with a return: home-based. Employee-requested or open-ended: host-based. We have four policy types on that grid and very few exceptions.
Total Rewards Manager, Silverline Media
The pension point is a fair hit and something we handled badly at first. We now make an employer contribution to an international savings plan for local-plus movers whose host country scheme they are unlikely to benefit from.
