Companies continue to send employees overseas amid cost cuts: KPMG

Companies across the world have continued to send employees overseas to take advantage of business opportunities, despite a reduced budget for international assignment programs during the economic downturn, a KPMG survey says.

According to a survey of 470 human resources (HR) executives by the global consultancy, firms are implementing a variety of options to potentially save costs associated with long-term or standard assignments.

Some of these options include short-term assignments (STAs), currently being used by 79 per cent of firms, while permanent transfers is being utilised by 45 per cent of organisations, the survey said.

"KPMG survey results mirror our experience with clients. We saw that companies/employers often adjusted parts of their programs and examined alternate assignment types based on their business needs, but continued to send assignees to work on long-term business opportunities overseas," KPMG LLP managing director of Global Mobility Advisory Services Achim Mossmann said.

"As the decline in global economy affected almost every area of business and most firms assessed cost-effectiveness of their operations, international assignments were no exception," Mossmann added.

The KPMG survey also revealed that firms made changes to various policy provisions to save costs.

For example, to help determine the cost of living adjustment (COLA) calculation on their assignee packages, 31 per cent of the firms surveyed are using an "efficient purchaser index".

The index is a sliding scale measurement of the ratio of the cost-of-living between the home and host locations, which assumes that an experienced assignee is a 'smart shopper' and is able to purchase goods and services more economically than the average assignee.

The KPMG survey revealed that 49 per cent of respondents find assignees take too much time to administer. Perhaps in response to this view, almost half (47 per cent) of the respondents outsource parts of their international assignment programs to gain access to a service provider's global resources and expertise.

"In some cases, HR departments have been downsized leaving fewer people to manage more work. In these situations, administrative models are often reviewed to achieve efficiency and cost savings," Mossmann said.

The KPMG report stated that outsourcing certain program elements can help reduce the time and effort spent by HR professionals and allows the organisation to tap into the economies of scale in an outsourcing environment.

"As organisations continue to utilise international assignments, they also need to make sure there is a mechanism in place to measure how these assignments provide long-term benefits to the organisation," it added.