Quarter of Irish firms not tracking employee mobility – PwC

In the survey, 33pc of respondents said they have no international employee mobility policy in place. Twenty-four percent reported that they do not track employee mobility at all. Just 14pc said they track employee mobility using specialised technology.

Knowledge transfer (57pc) was the top business driver for having a mobility strategy.  This was followed by expansion into new markets (52pc) and talent management and retention (48pc) reasons.

Key challenges for mobility programmes, according to the survey, are tracking employee movements (38pc) and costing such initiatives (38pc), followed by complex regulation (33pc) and tax cost control strategies (33pc).

While new tax reliefs for both inbound and outbound mobile employees were introduced by Finance Act 2012, the majority of employers reported that they did not know if employees would avail of the new relief known as the Foreign Earnings Deduction (FED), which is designed to incentivise repeat work visits by Irish employees to the Bric countries and South Africa.

“To ensure international business success, Irish companies need to have the right talent in the right place at the right cost,” said Mark Carter, PwC HR services partner. “This presents tremendous strategic as well as operational challenges, not least of which are developing policies which support the business need and tracking mobile workers to ensure cost control and adequate risk management.

“For example, properly designed mobility programmes can bring great benefits to employees, including skills development and travel opportunities, and enhance an organisation’s talent management. But to minimise cost and tax leakage, employers need to ensure that these programmes meet increasingly complex regulatory, tax and compliance requirements. Creating a mobility policy framework should realise several benefits including the cost efficient transition to new markets as well as providing great opportunities for staff.”

“Not all countries with a high growth potential are the most attractive work locations. For example, according to PwC’s earlier research, while 77pc of younger Irish workers want to work abroad, only 7pc are willing to work in emerging markets such as Brazil or India, 5pc in Russia, 4pc in South Africa and none of the Irish respondents want to work in China. In light of these findings, employers may need to push the benefits of the new tax relief to encourage working in the Brics countries more than had originally been anticipated.”

PwC said the ‘TravelWatch’ app facilitates easy tracking of employee mobility.

“We observed very early in the mobility shift to frequent business travellers that a successful tracking solution needs to be accessible and easy to use for the traveller, while also providing flexible alternatives for providing travel details,” said Tara Murray, PwC HR services manager.

“As a result we developed PwC TravelWatch, an application which allows businesses to efficiently track and manage their frequent business travellers. Travel data is collected through an individual’s mobile device, or web-based record. Businesses can quickly identify the number of work days each traveller spends in any location. This facilitates identification of  the “at risk” population, allows for informed assessments of the compliance risks, and spotlights potential cost containment opportunities.”