Sat, 21 November 2009
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Finance & Business
Financial crisis leaves euro with new popularity
Understanding the balance sheet basics
The details of the 'balance sheet' methodology remain a mystery to most expats. Our expert puts this straight.The balance sheet method:
It has been the standard approach to expatriate compensation for the past 30 years – the Balance Sheet. Most expatriates and HR professionals know that it is designed to "keep assignees whole" or ensure that they are "no worse off" during the assignment than they were at home.
easy concept, complex calculation.
However, despite the considerable time and effort spent communicating terms and conditions of assignments in multi-national corporations, the details of the Balance Sheet methodology remain a mystery to most expatriates – and even to some HR professionals tasked with administering the plan.
The black box
In policy and practice benchmarking surveys, 83 percent of companies reported using the home country balance sheet as the primary basis for their long-term expatriate compensation. The same percentage of corporations pays a Cost of Living Allowance in one form or another.
Though the concept may be easily understood, the calculation is extraordinarily complex. How does one keep assignees from any home country going to any host location "whole?" How do companies consider the spending patterns of hundreds of thousands of expatriates – who spend their money on everything from new cars to candy bars – and protect them for price differences and exchange rate changes? And what about the extra expenses that all expatriates incur because of their assignment – from increased international long distance fees to extra baby-sitting because Grandma and Grandpa are no longer easily available for free child-minding on Friday night?
In recent employee satisfaction metrics studies of more than 7000 assignees at 15 blue-chip companies, the areas of "contract preparation and communication", "information about expatriate pay" and "changes to expatriate pay" ranked as among the most challenging aspects of expatriate assignments.
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