ultinationals have made huge strides in establishing global compensation and
performance management systems with similar salary structures and evaluation
criteria for all employees. "It is bad human resources policy to discriminate
among similarly situated employees based on arbitrary factors, and in today’s
global workplace, ‘home country’ increasingly is becoming an arbitrary factor,"
says Donald C. Dowling Jr., international labor and employment counsel for
Proskauer Rose in New York City.
The collaborative nature of knowledge work makes it even more important to
establish consistent systems. "With projects and work teams now spanning
international borders, it makes less sense to apply different policies and
practices for employees who function as co-workers even through they may work in
different countries," Dowling notes.
"Obviously, there are differences in the labor markets and employment laws, so
there will always be major differences in the amounts that employees are paid
and the benefits they receive, but the trend is toward harmonizing plans unless
there is a business case for using different plans," Dowling says. "Large
multinationals are far along in the process."
Still, detailed labor laws and regulations abroad set limits on harmonization.
Dowling warns that U.S.-based workforce management executives tend to
underestimate the complexity of foreign labor laws. "U.S. laws in other
areas—for example, environmental laws—are usually far more complex than in other
countries," he says. "But with labor law, the situation flips. Labor laws abroad
are far more complex than in the United States."
Ongoing globalization and the at
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