Balance sheet approach expatriate compensation

Objectives of international compensation

When developing international compensation policies, an MNE seeks to satisfy several objectives. First, the policy should be consistent with the overall strategy, structure and business needs of the multinational. Second, the policy must work to attract and retain staff in the areas where the MNE has the greatest needs and opportunities. Thus, the policy must be competitive and recognize factors such as incentive for foreign service, tax equalization and reimbursement for reasonable costs. Third, the policy should facilitate the transfer of international employees in the most cost-effective manner for the firm. Fourth, the policy must give due consideration to equity and ease of administration.

The international employee will also have a number of objectives that need to be achieved from the firm's compensation policy. First, the employee will expect the policy to offer financial protection in terms of benefits, social security and living costs in the foreign location. Second, the employee will expect a foreign assignment to offer opportunities for financial advancement through income and/or savings. Third, the employee will expect issues such as the cost of housing, education of children, and home leave to be addressed in the policy.

If we contrast the objectives of the MNE and the employee, we of course see the potential for many complexities and possible problems, as some of these objectives cannot be maximized on both sides. The 'war stories' about problems in international compensation that we see in HR practitioner magazines is testimony to these complexities and problems. McNulty et al. also allude to these problems in their studies of expatriation, particularly in the Asia Pacific region.16

However, if we take away the specialist jargon and allow for the international context, are the competing objectives of the firm and the employee fundamentally different from that which exists in a domestic environment? We think not. We agree with the broad thrust of an influential article by Milkovich and Bloom17 which argues that firms must rethink the traditional view that local conditions dominate international compensation strategy. This is again another application of the ongoing balancing act between global standardization and local customization. We will return to these issues at the end of the chapter after we have covered some of the technical aspects and complexities of compensation in an international context.

KEY COMPONENTS OF AN INTERNATIONAL COMPENSATION PROGRAM FOR EXPATRIATES

The area of international compensation is complex primarily because multinationals must cater to three categories of employees: PCNs, TCNs and HCNs. In this section, we discuss key components of international compensation as follows.

Base salary

The term base salary acquires a somewhat different meaning when employees go abroad. In a domestic context, base salary denotes the amount of cash compensation serving as a benchmark for other compensation elements (such as bonuses and benefits). For expatriates, it is the primary component of a package of allowances, many of which are directly related to base salary (e.g. foreign service premium, cost-of-living allowance, housing allowance) as well as the basis for in-service benefits and pension contributions. It may be paid in home or local country currency or a combination of both. The base salary is the foundation block for international compensation whether the employee is a PCN or TCN. Major differences can occur in the employee's package depending on whether the base salary is linked to the home country of the PCN or TCN, or whether an international rate is paid. (We will return to this issue later in the chapter.)