An increasing number of companies of all sizes have or are building a multi-national presence. Our H1’2010 TalentWatch report indicates that one in six companies have globalized operations, a number which has doubled over the last two or so years.  The talent, potential, and cost of a company’s international workforce is a global asset. If you are truly interested in becoming a customer-centric business, you expect your HR professionals to be transformational and drive business goals, and you are proactively responding to your global expansion, then you don’t have room for HR technology that doesn’t offer global functionality and analytics. The level of globalization that you require in an HR ERP, or what is referred to today as an HRMS, depends on your company’s present and projected business and talent needs.  It is important to realize that it is not enough for your HRMS to offer what was once known as the basics of an HR ERP --- in other words, the automation of information in your employees’ personnel “jackets.”  Rather, to address your global business needs, your HRMS must expose the business analytics and the talent data of your international workforce.

Global Talent Data
When we ask what is meant by an HRMS having global or international functionality, a great deal of variability exists. Additionally, there are a number of factors that drive the complexity of an organization’s international HR data, including:

• Multiple languages and character sets;
• Multiple currencies and time zones;
• Specific country data requirements;
• Compliance with local HR practices and regulations; and,
• Adherence to global data privacy directives.

Furthermore, there is the need to educate HR staff in headquarters and country locations on the differences in processes, terms and work rules that exist between countries. Often times, local workflow processes need to be customized to reflect these differences. The tradeoff in selecting the right level of this global functionality is, of course, cost and complexity. Large, distributed organizations with sizable populations in many countries need country-specific functionality, as well as local HR standards and regulations. Organizations with a smaller percentage of employees spread across countries may need only the functionality to track key data elements regarding non-headquartered employees. And, globally dispersed organizations will need extensive language capabilities to support their employee populations, while other organizations may need only regional language support.

Best-Practice Global Functionality
In consideration of the wide spread regarding global data, there is no one particular “best” level of global application, but what is consistent and standard is that regardless of company size, business goals, or talent goals, global functionality is needed—functionality that goes well beyond the basics of employee payroll data and benefits data.  To gain better insight into the appropriate level of global capability, it is important to understand  HRMS global product capabilities. The “right” level is the one most aligned with your organization’s needs as grouped into the following three levels:

• Global data all in one system, with in-country localizations on a large scale and language capabilities in Unicode (which allows for special character sets beyond western languages);
• Multinational data with general localization and multiple language functionality (based on western character set, for example, English, French, Spanish); and,
• The ability to track international data in English.

Global data includes country-specific required fields. These vary widely and some are localized. For example, the classic global data element referenced by every HRMS provider is a field to track religion – but only in Germany. In Germany, religion and state are separate, although certain religious organizations may be approved to levy taxes on their members that the state collects. So, HR needs to track religion for payroll.

Managing Global Talent Data
A few HRMS vendors are even taking steps to help organizations manage the complexity of global data privacy by attaining Safe Harbor certification. Countries in the European Union, Asia and elsewhere outside the U.S. have implemented strict directives about how employee personal, identification, and compensation data must be managed and who can have access to that information. Safe Harbor privacy principles may allow U.S. companies to certify that they meet the privacy requirements by registering and documenting their internal controls on personal data.
Today’s truly global HRMS providers – PeopleSoft, ADP, Lawson and others – allow local and global workforces access to critical HR information anytime, anywhere -- from a standard web browser. These providers offer solutions with a configurable architecture enabling organizations to easily extend the solution across international borders so that employees can work in their preferred language and currency, regardless of location.  This open architecture approach to organizations’ complex and advanced global functional requirements enables today’s global HRMS providers to quickly roll-out additional product functionality for any country; thus, global organizations realize immediate business benefits from their global HRMS solution.

What ‘s Next for Global Functionality, and What’s Beyond That
When a HRMS provider is committed to offering this global functionality, they can be reasonably sure that their customers are enabled to proactively manage global human capital requirements throughout the entire employment life cycle and link those to business goals.

So, what else is global ‘must have’ functionality for today’s HRMS providers? Visual user interfaces reflective of local culture? Mobile capability in multiple languages? Or even integrated talent management applications in country-specific workflows? 

Is global appeal the most important functionality of today’s HRMS solutions? What about integration between core HR data and talent data? Usability on m-devices? Please share your inputs and opinions. And next time, we’ll be ready to share what we learned from the masses attending the HR Tech Conference in Chicago at the end of next month.