Leo, the financial manager for an oil and gas services supplier with facilities and projects in both the US and Canada, had been asked by the CEO to be prepared for budget cutbacks on projects if the price of oil dropped any lower (or rose higher for that matter), or to be ready if some projects closed and others expanded. In this market, no projects were secure, but one thing was certain: he would be moving their people from one place to the next and the jurisdictional headaches were just going to get worse.
Last year, a reduction in revenues was the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. The organization was growing rapidly and getting new contracts; his biggest issue was finding qualified and skilled workers to staff their facilities. This year, they were working hard to keep the contracts they had for projects that were “on hold” or were operating at limited capacity. It was becoming more and more difficult to meet the needs of his cross-border team and ensure the success of their projects.
Fluctuating resources and revenue require extreme flexibility
Leo, like every financial officer with a cross-border workforce, is faced with the daunting task of allocating resources between his company’s facilities and jobsites, in an ever-changing landscape of projects and revenues. Worse, many of those projects depend on international commodities pricing – something he has absolutely no control over and which can change in an instant.
It’s imperative that financial officers and managers have real-time, up to the minute information regarding which workers are scheduled at which jobsites and what resources are available for allocation. Is your HR software helping you manage this information effectively? Integrated software which coordinates scheduling and payroll enables you to direct the right people to the right job -- reducing overtime, duplication of efforts and wasted resources.
Payroll for workers at multiple jobsites can be frustrating and time-consuming
Another challenge companies with cross-border workforces face is making sure that each worker is paid correctly based on their location and specific job duties at that location. Reallocations of resources can mean payroll nightmares. Cross-border workforces mean that employees are subject to many different local, jurisdictional, and contractual regulations on pay and job assignment -- sometimes multiple jurisdictions on the same paycheck. Understanding the most up-to-date rules and regulations is difficult enough, but figuring out where each employee did work and which regulations to apply is impossible to to efficiently and accurately by hand.
An integrated payroll and scheduling system and hr system for cross-border workforce that tracks each employee’s location and performance, and automatically applies the appropriate rules to payroll calculations, saves the employees in HR and payroll countless hours. Plus, an integrated system results in markedly fewer payroll errors, which makes both employees and manager happy and would reduce cross-border HR issues with maintaining compliance with all the rules and regulations that apply to each employee at each worksite.
A new HR system for cross-border workforce could be the answer to your HR headaches
It’s not just a decision about HR software: it’s a question of how to make your business run most efficiently, and how to make implementation of the new cross-border HR system as seamless and painless as possible. Our team understands the complexities of government payroll issues, cross-border team management, and union and collective bargaining agreements and will develop a system that helps your unique business thrive. We will work with you to determine exactly how your system needs to work and develop a plan to implement the new software, including helping you prepare for implementation, coordinating setup, training, and troubleshooting, and forging an ongoing relationship to help with your future concerns and questions. Contact us today to get started