Your people matter
People are essential.
For you. For us. For every successful organization.
HR faces many challenges.
But challenges can be turned into opportunities.
Let’s work together. We are here to help.
Strategy & Change
Our HR Strategy & Change services
Design the right workforce approach to deliver your strategy. Put initiatives in place to attract and retain key talent, develop required skills to keep up with market dynamics and build professional teams that share your organization’s values. Embrace your future-proof organization with the proper technology, data and metrics. Today’s worker expects relevant, heavily tailored, more meaningful experiences and engagement that not only meet but exceed demanding expectations.
Change management can be a delicate process. Without the support from the stakeholders involved and leaders, it can be challenging to ensure a successful transition to the new desired target state, such as technology adoption, new ways of working, a reduced cost based or a cultural shift. How should you manage change in an agile way? How can you use data more effectively to deliver transformation? What would your leaders need to do to support an important transformation?
A structured approach, incorporating design thinking and persona-based experiences as well as behavioral science capabilities, can help change to happen and stick.
Your organization’s culture is rooted in shared assumptions about your workforce’s values, norms and behaviors, which determine the response to internal and external challenges.
Wherever there is a gap between your people's personal values and behaviors, and those that your organization wants to represent, you’ll find opportunities to undertake a culture transformation process.
Aligning your culture with your organization’s strategy ensures that your organization and your people work in harmony, which positively impacts your internal operations, stakeholder relationships, and your overall business performance.
Successful HR Transformation is built on three capabilities: Transformation, Technology, and Change, with Employee Experience underpinning all three.
Over the past 20 years, we’ve seen the growing digitalization of HR as Cloud HR, social media, big data and HR analytics, AI and robotics, to name a few key trends. It’s fair to say that recent technology has revolutionized the workplace, including the HR department, bringing new tools and more efficient processes. But technology alone does not drive results and your HR department must continue to develop the skills and knowledge to keep up with the pace of change and stay competitive.
An organization’s success depends on its ability to shape the workforce of the future, nurture a purpose-driven culture and design a “consumer grade” employee experience that is relevant, heavily-tailored, and meaningful.
The workforce is becoming more diverse, while people are also living longer and have longer careers. Different generations have differing needs and expectations from their employers and customized experiences for employees are fast-becoming an essential part of HR design.
HR leaders recognize the importance of discovering new ways to attract and retain the best talent by creating a positive employee experience. A clear plan is critical, with appropriate actions to align your value proposition as closely as possible with your employees’ expectations.
Today’s dynamic business environment requires a fundamental re-think of the HR role. How can HR prove its relevance within your organization and bring strategic value to your business? How can technology be appropriately used to truly understand the needs and motivations of your employees? How can HR design a positive employee experience that keeps pace with their evolving demands?
COVID-19 has shown that people are the number one priority for nearly every organization around the world. In response, HR leaders find themselves at the forefront of re-shaping the way work gets done. This presents an opportunity for the HR function to switch from firefighting immediate pressures to strategically engineering a successful future. There has never been a more exciting time to be in HR.
The world around us is transforming faster than we think. HR roles are changing, and technology is defining the path ahead. The traditional operating model of many HR functions, often based on the Ulrich model, is ripe for innovation. As the scope of HR shifts, your service delivery model needs a significant re-design to stay relevant.
Prolific availability of data, digital technologies and the ability to deliver services virtually are catalysts for fundamental and ongoing changes to your HR service delivery model. Navigating this change successfully will empower your HR function to find new ways of delivering value to your organization, as you move from standardization to customization and consumerization.
Leaders are vital to the success of implementing change programs at every level, but they need to manifest specific qualities to deliver these changes. No matter the scale of your organization, there are critical capabilities and personal characteristics that enable leaders to successfully embed and sustain change. These capabilities can be learned but may be challenging to qualify without a clear skills framework and learning approach. Your leadership team should keep developing their change management skills, so that your organization can confidently deliver, embed and sustain the change you need for your business.
When was the last time you undertook a health check on your HR organization? Doing so means considering multiple areas, including your HR service delivery model, HR processes, wage tax and social security compliance, legal compliance and/or opportunities or pensions. The health check can be performed via a HR scan, which can offer very valuable information and allows you to have the relevant context you need to assess the status of all employee-related matters. If non-compliance issues are detected, these can also be quickly addressed and solved. Efficiency and maturity assessments, which critically analyze your current HR processes and organizational set-up - while being compared to other market leading practices in the HR domain - can offer a valuable benchmark guiding future strategy, efficiency improvements and identifying ways to make the most of any optimization opportunities.
People analytics can be applied to different sources of structured (HR master data) and unstructured data (CVs, performance reviews) to identify, extract, interpret and visualize meaningful patterns to provide advanced insights. As organizations generate increasing amounts of data, the options for analysis can be overwhelming and knowing which insights will be most helpful to your agenda can be a challenge. Using People analytics tools is the difference between an organization making educated guesses and making fact-based decisions about their people and their experience.
egration, separation, and carve-outs – it requires major HR organizational transformation and entails an enormous adjustment for your personnel and stakeholders. This can ignite a spiral of uncertainties and questions that trigger stressful dynamics for everyone involved.
To make the transition as smooth as possible, it is crucial to maintain focus on every step of the way, precisely structure change management, dive deeply into cultural integration initiatives and underpin the entire process with solid leadership support.
Workforce-shaping means having the right people, in the right place, at the right time. With the arrival of automation and artificial intelligence, organizations in every industry are exploring and trying to understand the advancing integration of humans and machines in the workplace, as well as how to effectively combine the best of each.
Connecting business strategy, workforce analytics, innovation and your HR agenda will help you understand the long-term requirement for people and skills in your organization, so that you feel prepared for whatever the future brings.
Flexible working
Our Flexible working services
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced businesses, and more specifically HR teams, to rethink the way they approach the modern workplace. With remote working considered the new norm, organizations have had to consider new ways of ensuring the wellbeing of their employees while maintaining a certain level of connectivity. Adherence to the relevant employment legislation is also important when investing in new skills and technologies.
Modern workplace: remote and flexible work arrangements
Remote working is a new pillar of the modern workplace. Jump-started by necessity as a result of Covid-19, larger numbers of employees are working remotely than ever before. While this brings a number of benefits, it’s important not to overlook the need for teams to stay connected and maintain a healthy work culture.
With this latest development in working norms, organizations need to invest in new leadership skills to support remote working. Encouraging employees to develop personal leadership characteristics and a digital growth mindset, as well as safeguarding the experience and overall wellbeing of employees, is crucial to long-term success in remote and flexible working arrangements.
A word to the wise: implementation of new technologies may also impact your employee functions and working time. It’s important to keep an eye on this, as strict employment law rules must be followed and social dialogue is often required before and during the introduction of any changes. KPMG Law can support you in finding pragmatic approaches when considering changes to existing working arrangements, as well as helping you to make sure that you are fully compliant with the latest regulation.
The remote working trend has accelerated the need for evolution of global mobility. Companies that react and adapt quickly will find business as usual, while other may struggle. In any case, there are a few key considerations when a company allows ‘work from anywhere’ including the social security and permanent establishment implications.
New reality
The ongoing pandemic has initiated an economic crisis, and, for the foreseeable future, the only certainty is uncertainty. We now expect a much longer and far more transformative era of turbulence in ways that were impossible to imagine at the beginning of 2020, and businesses will inevitably face many tough decisions.
Your HR team needs to be primed and ready to respond to any shift in this new reality. Whether that be more competition for talent as remote work opens up new global labor pools, or changes to your existing workforce in the form of collective layoffs or temporary unemployment, there is a great deal of complexity ahead.
Remuneration and cost
When organizations need to cut costs, (collective) dismissals are often seen as an appropriate measure. However, such dismissals can lower morale and employee productivity, while placing additional pressure on remaining employees to continue to share the same workload. It may sometimes be necessary, but in many cases there are other options that can first be explored to achieve cost reduction outcomes.
One possibility is collective reduction of working time - which lowers overall employee remuneration and doesn’t require you to lose personnel unnecessarily. An advantage of this is that your experienced workforce remains intact and you don’t then lose time recruiting and training new staff when market conditions change. Instead, you can focus on directing your workforce to take advantage of new business opportunities as soon as they arise.
International mobility
Our international mobility services
Workforces have become more and more mobile, as today’s global marketplace sees employees travel more frequently between locations and employers seek foreign talent to boost local needs. With international mobility in play, organizations need to navigate the respective immigration and employment laws at various levels, while managing employee expectations when it comes to remuneration, social security, pension and tax contributions.
In today’s global marketplace, opportunities for your organization can present themselves at any number of different locations. To fully grasp these opportunities, organizations are increasingly recruiting qualified people from abroad and moving their existing employees between countries.
As a result, employees often find themselves working in another country or travelling between their home base and the location of their current assignment. Many organizations also call upon foreign talent to cover local sourcing needs.
Managing such a global workforce can be challenging and requires constant observation and understanding of the various complex and continuously evolving immigration laws and practices.
Employment law can come across as a true legal maze. As the rules are issued on different levels - not only international, federal and regional levels, but also on sector and company levels - it is often challenging to keep track of all changes. Employment in an international context adds additional complexity to this already challenging environment.
Employee remuneration is typically a mix of compensation in cash and in kind. However, it’s often unclear whether, when, or how compensation and allowances are subject to payroll tax and social security contributions. The rules governing this field are complex and encompass numerous special arrangements in areas such as pensions, stock option plans and employee savings plans.
A crystal-clear employment package is essential for both employee and employer. Achieving that clarity largely depends on properly accounting for payroll tax and social security contributions.
With workforces that are rapidly changing, increased remote work and international assignments over the course of an employee’s career, it can be a complex challenge to ensure that (statutory) pension and social security benefits are kept in line with the employer’s and employee’s expectations, taking into account the latest changes in legislation and working arrangements.
Employment across national borders can be very complicated. Work from anywhere, Brexit, government subsidies and reliefs have increased that complexity even more. Mitigating tax risks, tax compliance, reducing tax costs can be challenging. International tax planning, qualitative tax policies and tax processes are often a must for organizations seeking to successfully address these challenges.
Reward
Our reward services
In today’s ‘war for talent’, organizations need to come with more creative ways to remain attractive employers. This means developing suitable reward programs that offer employees the flexibility and freedom to adapt their packages to their individual needs. Offering sustainable transportation solutions, attractive variable compensation and complementary pension plans are just some examples of initiatives employers can take to retain top talent.
Benefits
It’s widely known that people are an organization’s greatest asset. A well-designed reward program focuses on attracting and retaining talent while encouraging employees to act in ways consistent with your business objectives.
How can you ensure that your reward offering is compliant from tax, social security and employment law perspectives? How can you improve employee engagement in your organization through your benefit scheme?
Complementary pension plans
When your organization considers implementing or reviewing its total compensation/reward package, complementary pension plans are an essential factor. As plans are made for the long term, it is an ideal retention tool. In addition, the grant of variable compensation can be optimized by paying at least a part – if not all – of the bonus amount as a contribution in a bonus pension plan.
However, the legal framework is complex and the intended benefits should be accurately valued. It is important to determine which employees your organization wants to reward, taking into account non-discrimination rules. Finally, deciding whether to establish a proper pension fund or contract an insurer- as well as which one - are delicate exercises.
Flexible rewards
The “war for talent” is raging. The current labor market poses increasing challenges for companies to be, and remain, attractive employers. Organizations that want to attract and retain top talent are therefore increasingly trying to distinguish themselves by offering an appealing and adaptable remuneration package.
A flexible reward package or cafeteria plan is a step in that direction. However, smart companies go one step further and give employees the freedom to adapt their package to their individual and changing needs. By focusing on those personal needs, your organization becomes a more attractive employer, which, in turn, increases the commitment of your employees.
Mobility
Employees are increasingly opting for sustainable transportation solutions. An HR organization that understands and responsibly develops this option as part of its reward offering helps to modernize and strengthen its employer brand, while delivering a mobility plan fit for contemporary lifestyle needs.
Total reward statement
Risk & Compliance
Our risk & compliance services
Organizations need to ensure that their employment policies and procedures are compliant with the applicable laws and regulations while remaining true to their business objectives and strategies. This means successfully reviewing your HR processes to ensure that all relevant risks are captured, understood, evaluated and properly addressed. HR-related risks can be mitigated, but require a specific set of skills, tools and resources.
HR Risk Management
While risk has always been an integral part of the HR environment, now more than ever, organizations are expected to focus on ethics and integrity, and develop a plan to prevent the occurrence of misconduct and/or fraud. In reality, we often see that the HR Director is charged with this responsibility - formally or otherwise - and managing this HR-related risk successfully requires a specific set of skills, tools and resources.
Labor law
Employment law can often appear to be a legal maze. As the rules are issued on different levels - not only international, federal and regional levels, but also on sector and company levels - it is often challenging to keep track of all changes. Being fully compliant with all applicable legislation is not an easy task. Specific questions or attention points might come up when you consider, for example, whether or not to work with self-employed contractors, or during the termination of employment contracts.
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