Just as technology plays an increasingly important role in the relocation management experience, it also brings an additional solution to compliance management.
How can a relocation manager make sure they are following best practices at every step of the services?
Today’s relocation management technology can help you reduce the labor and expense associated with compliance management.
An employee mobility world with growing compliance requirements
Technology has empowered organizations to build across markets now with a borderless workforce and remote working, this has created an intricate puzzle of various regulations and compliance to deal with. Additionally, states and governments are powered by technology to create more demanding compliance frameworks and better application of them.
States are smarter and can process more data
The rise of the biometric passport for example that was pushed particularly after 09/11 went from 11 countries in 2005 to over 120 today.
Business travelers are getting more and more scrutinized
Governments are keener at looking into Taxation of overseas assets
Government are expecting more reporting from organizations with the implementation of instant payroll reporting (i.e. Single touch payroll in Australia (STP))
These rapid changes in compliance are seen as a greater liability for HR clients and they often want to push that liability to the relocation service provider or DSP. Of course with technology, expectations are higher. Relocation management becomes easier with more tracking expected. So because of technology you are expected to monitor your supply chain to the highest level of compliance.
Increased data flows also created new data protection requirements
Certainly, the fastest growing compliance requirement is data protection. GPDR alone for service providers represent over 50 Documents with 30 of those internal policies and procedures. This represents over 150 work hours to fully prepare the documents for a medium-sized relocation business. When you add auditing, training, you are looking at a commitment of over 250 work hours.
So that’s how technology has created or participated in this new rapidly changing
compliance landscape
Borderless organisations
Smarter governments
Higher expectations on the supply chain
Increased data flow
On the other end, technology can also help solve growing compliance requirements by reducing the labor and expense associated with processes and auditing.
Tech solving growing compliance requirements
Let’s explore where the true value of technology in this compliance management lies.
1) Increased Data empowerment
There is great potential there to get that data to drive the more meaningful decision for your clients.
a) Get the right data quickly
We all know the transferees are more likely to answer questions and share documents at the start of the relocation process. Ask only the questions needed. Give them information space they can update when for example bank account or familial status changes. Tech can help not burden the customer by requesting only what they need to fill up.
b/ Drive data to be more meaningful to your clients
Predictive analytics, for example through interactive cost projection, helps HR cover all the aspects of compliance by including them from the start. Tap into an enrichment of your data sources, as opposed to being a burden it's a great way to create a more insightful proposition. The pandemic has shown how your knowledge of local regulations and compliance is an asset, making more out of the data drives more meaningful insights tight to the regulatory environment and drives value that can be passed to the client.
2) Automated workflows
Probably the biggest gap today. Some of the more basic processes need to be automated through a simple workflow. This helps enable decision making at various levels within an organization. It is a foundation part still missing today in many of our industries.
That is a great way to stay on top of rapidly changing compliance requirements. Technology offers new opportunities for monitoring compliance internally.
Logging of actions taken, automatic audit-trails
Building greater trust and transparency
Streamlining actions and having built-in compliance checklists
Detailing country specific or city specific immigration alerts
3) Contract management
We all know the grave consequences that may result from improper contract management. There are great opportunities there to standardize and automate your contracting processes and centralize contract data collection
4) Implementing a Learning Culture
Compliance is a lot about training, including training the relocation company’s staff. Additionally, technology can come to support your efforts in educating your clients, through interactive HR platforms and content. But also educate the assignees via their digital employee experience such as to reduce the risk associated with poor information or decisions on their end.