In today’s business environment, executives and workforce members in global companies often move around the world at a pace rivaling the speed at which information is transmitted electronically. But there is a new rough patch on the road to a borderless world. Business transnational transfers and consulting assignments lasting 30 days to six months or longer have become commonplace, yet, at the same time, the reaction to terrorism, by virtually every country, has been to establish new immigration policies that consider even the most casual tourist to be a potential terrorist. Eventually there will be tools to refine the barriers: biometrics embedded in passports, a robust database of frequent travelers and suspected terrorists, 10-point fingerprint databanks that are shared across sovereign borders and well-trained personnel to issue visas and review travelers seeking entry. Today, however, all of these are in their nascent stages. In the interim, the changed policies and procedures and lack of efficient tools to overcome barriers result in the current crude process, where legitimate travelers are being treated virtually the same as those with illegal intent and delay is inevitable.
Tarnished Reputation
For any international company, the deportation of a key employee whose visa application was mishandled can disrupt a time-sensitive project schedule and cause the loss of a customer’s business. The universal legal conclusion that migration is a benefit, not a right, makes the cost of non-compliance very substantial. A company’s failure to provide consistent and complete information about itself and its migrating employees can result in fines and penalties. There are also significant costs in employee relationships when employees bear the legal and personal burden of detention or deportation because of violating a country’s aggressive immigration policy. Migration infractions in countries such as China, Singapore, Russia, Nigeria, Brazil and the United States can bring jail sentences and even corporal punishment. Moreover, such a problem with an employee’s migration history will likely result in future visa denials and a tarnished corporate reputation that prohibits the company from placing critical skills where and when they are needed.
Balancing Privacy and Public Disclosure
Another significant but subtle cost of global migration compliance, particularly for U.S.-based companies, is the balancing of employee information confidentiality with security compliance requirements. Employee data protection for a nation’s citizens does not extend to foreign nationals seeking entry for work or business visits. As a result, it is critical that employee information considered private by companies but deemed public and unprotected by migration laws be managed through a centralized service unit within the company’s legal or corporate HR organization. The purpose of such a unit is to combine management processes and database technology to enable organized and consistent recording, tracking and releasing of the personal information needed for the migration process.
Harmonizing a company’s internal information security requirements with the demand for full disclosure required to obtain visas and entry to other nations is difficult but not impossible. Tight control under central corporate HR or legal direction is particularly important to ensure compliance with company policies in each of the many remote sites where visa work will be needed. Establishing this control in an internal service unit with its own internal safeguards assures a corporation that sensitive personal information will not be leaked and misused through ignorance, carelessness or malice.
All outside service providers should be required to know and adhere to internal information security policies. Constant communication between internal and external personnel is a must, as Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. has found (see sidebar). Freescale has regularly scheduled meetings and electronic communication in which global HR and legal personnel and outside service providers coordinate standards and procedures. “Without a purposeful communication effort, even in a technology company such as ours, technology alone can’t provide the necessary standardization,” says Senior Immigration Specialist Melissa Davila. Such a comprehensive effort is a definite cost, but it prevents the far greater economic and legal costs of failure to comply either with foreign country admission requirements or with domestic personal data privacy statutes.
Case Study: Freescale Semiconductor, Inc.
The employees of Freescale, one of the world’s largest semiconductor companies, can serve on temporary assignments lasting up to two years at operations in more than 30 countries. The company’s in-house legal staff has two dedicated Immigration Specialists, who use worldwide consulting organizations Littler Global and EDS to handle all compliance issues and relocation logistics. Both organizations have dedicated regional case managers to Freescale’s needs and they meet monthly with the Immigration Specialists. Human resource and hiring managers around the world can contact either company directly for assistance. What distinguishes Freescale’s global migration management is a highly organized internal communications effort that focuses on quarterly two-day meetings in which the Immigration Specialists, HR personnel and outside service providers all meet to review standards and procedures. The ongoing communication also includes regular electronic newsletters and email updates. “Consistency and efficiency are our goals for migration of people to each of our countries,” declares Senior Immigration Specialist Melissa Davila. “The in-house specialists and outside service providers are the designated points of contact for everyone in the company, and our cutting-edge communication efforts ensure that we all work together with a shared agenda and focus.”
Consistency is Vital
Because the information provided to any one country to obtain a work visa or gain entry for work-related visits is shared with other nations through vast and growing web-based databases, data given about a company in Beijing, Bangalore, Kuala Lampur, London, and Sao Paulo can be compared and analyzed. Unless there is a centralized source and accounting for the vast amount of data those countries require about a company, and about individual employee applicants, the chances of discrepancy are great. Without standardized data on the company (number of employees, gross income, product descriptions) and the individual employee (name, job titles, dates of employment, family history), there will be discrepancies that will single out visa applications for extra review, delay and possibly denial. The only way to ensure consistency in the information going to global security agencies is to centralize that information, and carefully control who has access to it and how it is monitored and updated.
Consistency of information management thus not only ensures the protection of personal privacy, but it is fundamental to the consistent information that global immigration authorities require. Many companies increasingly believe that the best way to achieve this consistency is through oversight by in-house legal staff, rather than the traditional role held by the human resources department. Having oversight reside with the law department lends authority to dealings with host country governments and business operations, and affords the most proactive capability to deal with changing national regulations. HR staffs should still play key roles that reflect their knowledge of and commitment to the company’s corporate policies and practices. This is vital in organizations such as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., which has an extremely strong corporate culture and high performance requirements. “For us, ensuring that Wal-Mart’s own high internal performance requirements and standards shape migration policies is integral to the success of our entire relocation effort,” says Ryan Larsen, Director – Global Mobility. When processes and policies are thus aligned, the result will be maximum efficiency that combines the best practices for such information metrics as timeliness and accessibility.
Management Models
Legal staff oversight is just the starting point of managing migration activities. The executive with the responsibility for directing migration compliance and logistics, even with the support of designated legal or HR staff, cannot manage the full migration compliance process alone. This requires a blend of outside services typically organized in one of three models.
The single provider model places all global visa services with a single global provider, managed by an internal executive. Working with a single provider is the easiest to manage, as it exponentially reduces the number of players that must be educated, coordinated, reviewed and supervised. It also is the best method to monitor ongoing performance, and to implement changes in performance standards when necessary. This option thus has substantial cost and service efficiencies. Its only real drawback is that it offers no safety net if service problems develop with the sole provider.
In the multiple provider model, the company retains central control over the global migration process but uses multiple providers, working with regional coordinators throughout the organization to deliver the service. The territory covered by the regional coordinators is determined based upon the best fit with a company’s current business-based geographic areas.
Using multiple providers at multiple locations may allow for greater flexibility and offer access to a wider variety of customized practices. It also creates a number of potential problems: discrepancies and miscommunication in the visa application process; incompatible provider technologies; and difficulties in coordinating quality assurance.
The full regional model gives regional coordinators, who report to the central migration director, the authority to select their own service providers. In theory, this allows the coordinators to take advantage of local experts and gives local employees personal access to services – but it can involve substantial inefficiencies in service, cost and compliance assurance. It also requires significant and ongoing management time to select, educate and coordinate multiple providers, and increases information vulnerability. Perhaps the biggest negative is that compliance inevitably will be oriented around local results rather than a company’s overall corporate global goals and concerns.
Case Study: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
Wal-Mart operates stores in 14 countries, and senior employees can be designated for short-term international assignments lasting anywhere from six weeks to 18 months. The company exercises centralized oversight of all such assignments through its Global Mobility Team, which functions as part of the in-house international human resource staff. The team consists of Mobility Managers who focus on two distinct areas: payroll and relocation logistics, and legal and tax issues. They review the timeline and objectives of all hiring manager requests for global assignments, which are presented in standardized forms for analysis. Once the requests are approved, the Mobility Managers use a dedicated in-house database to work with HR coordinators and local legal counsel in each country to handle migration details. The goal of Wal-Mart’s global migration approach is to ensure consistently high levels of service and compliance throughout all worldwide operations. Says Ryan Larsen, Director – Global Mobility, “When it comes to taking care of our associates, there is a high level of expectation that our in-house group will provide the best quality of care, consistent with Wal- Mart’s own culture.”
Hybrid Approach
Experience suggests that the best way to manage risk is a hybrid approach, using regional coordinators and a single or very limited number of providers who can expand as a company grows and who have access and control over the best regional and local resources where needed or desired. The regional coordinators have provider selection input, but all decisions ultimately remain with the central migration director as part of legal staff supervision. This approach also allows a company to mitigate or reduce adverse reactions to a centralized program from formerly autonomous local operations.
In a hybrid approach, maintaining consistency is the essential requirement for success. That means consistency of compliance with the multiple securitydriven regulations involved in any migration, consistency of information about employees and company operations and consistency in the use of robust and accurate central data storage and form preparation systems to which all providers should have access. Ultimately, the security mentality of national governments and the consequences of noncompliance make a coordinated approach, adopted with due regard for company culture and business priorities, the best compliance strategy for today’s global migration realities.
The Five Keys to Success
Today’s combination of global migration barriers and costs makes it essential that companies develop a consistent approach to managing migration issues. That approach must use best practices as defined by these five key metrics:
• Quality: the consistency and thoroughness of compliance with the multinational regulations involved in any global migration.
• Timeliness: the ability to complete migration placements quickly and efficiently.
• Accessibility: the openness of any compliance system to the needs of employees, local subsidiary operations and governments, and internal corporate administrators.
• Technology: the integration of consistent information about the company and its employees with on-line access to migration forms and procedures of national governments.
• Culture: the recognition of the barriers and misunderstandings posed by the fact that, in most countries, the administrators in agencies that decide work entry are not fluent in English.
Belkis Muldoon is a shareholder in the Littler Global Corporate Migration Group. Previously she lead global immigration services for a Fortune 500 company. www.littlerglobal.com