By: Andy Latkovskis, HR Officer, New Horizons Global Partners

Building a global business is essential in the current highly competitive and connected world. It allows an avenue to increase revenue and global reputation as well as hire the best talents. However, it is not always smooth sailing. You must be prepared to deal with different challenges along the way. The truth is no one ventures into international markets with failure in mind. That is why implementing different global expansion strategies is crucial in mitigating risks, ensuring compliance, overcoming barriers to entry among others. Moreover, one surefire strategy to grow a successful global business is to focus on international payroll.

So, how does an international payroll help in building a successful global business? Let’s explore a few ways below.

Freeing up resources

One advantage of an international payroll is process automation. This eliminates a need to deal with repetitive tasks as is in manual payroll processing and consolidation of data. Another great feature of international payroll is the employee self-service features that allow employees to do certain functions such as accessing the payslips online. This translates to less work for your HR team, and more time on their hands to focus on other important tasks. In addition, with payroll related work reduced by a significant percentage, you can have a leeway to reduce payroll personnel and save some costs. Moreover, you can choose to outsource the international payroll to an employer of record. This further reduces operational costs while allowing you more time to focus on growing your global business.

Driving employee engagement

Process automation that comes with international payroll not only reduces payroll related tasks, but also ensures a timely, efficient and error-free payroll processing and payments. And, not just payment, but payment to employees in their home currencies. Employees are bound to be happy when they receive their payments in time and accurately, with the hassle of finding the best currency exchange rate eliminated. Moreover, the happier the employees are with your company, the more engaged they are likely to be to their tasks and the overall organization. Well, it goes without saying that highly engaged employees are highly productive and perform exemplary, which affects your bottom line positively.

Ensuring compliance

Every jurisdiction comes with its own and sometimes unique laws and regulations. Furthermore, one of the fundamentals of a successful global business is compliance with the various legal and tax regulations in different countries of operation. An international payroll allows compliance with the varying regulations in the countries that you operate. In addition, the ability to centralize all payroll data in one platform allows you to spot irregularities  and rectify them beforehand This ensures that you don’t have to deal with legal complications that can be costly in terms of money and reputation. Moreover, having a good name makes it easy to earn customer trust for increased revenue and profits.

Better payroll management

Successful organizations thrive on efficient cash flow management. Payroll costs are among the highest spending for most organizations. Thus, prioritizing effective payroll management is crucial. Moreover, that starts with knowing your overall payroll cost. However, this can be hard if you rely on different payroll providers for the different countries of operations. On the other hand, an international payroll centralizes all the global payroll information and data in one platform. This translates to more reliable data that can inform important decisions regarding the payroll and your global workforce.

Enhanced scalability

Building a successful global business means spotting opportunities in new markets and moving swiftly to grab them. However, each country that you set up your business comes with payroll requirements. An international payroll can be an instrumental support for your scalability goals. If you can choose one that supports more countries, you can continue enjoying the benefits of a global payroll as you grow your business across different countries. This means hitting the ground running in new markets as you have one less thing to worry about.

Conclusion

Going global is the dream of any entrepreneur who is focused on business growth. However, growing a successful global business requires a strategic approach. Investing in an international payroll is among the best strategies that you can implement for a successful global business for several reasons. They include enhanced payroll management, easier scalability, assured compliance, freeing  up important resources and ensuring accurate and timely payments that drive employee engagement.

Author Bio: Andy Latkovskis is an HR Officer specializing in employee training and development. He is truly passionate about nurturing talent and ideas that evoke transformative change in individuals, teams, and organizations. Andy is always seeking opportunities to help others with his expertise, be it by his profession or simply sharing his experiences and advice online.