Sometimes we will have three or four different interpretations of tax laws. We’ll have our client, we’ll have our own advisor, we’ll have the government officials, and our own experts internally bring their interpretations and identify grey areas of tax and labor laws for, say, the Ivory Coast or Tunisia. Then on the employer of record side, it’s also compliance. The biggest challenge is that customers—in the U.S., for example—are used to being able to fire somebody on the spot. In South Africa, you can’t do that. There’s a big education process involved because many countries’ labor laws are more protecting of employees than in the U.S. A certain process must be followed, there are various discussions, and at some point, this also involves us as the legal employer. GPA: How is your organization leveraging technology to improve your operations and the operations of clients? Anton van Heerden: With a cloud-based payroll platform, people can access it from anywhere. It’s device agnostic. You don’t need to download
software. All you need is an internet connection. Because of the cloud technology, employees can access the system from their mobile devices, they can apply for leave, view their post, submit expense claims, do just about anything. So, cloud technology is so important to what we do, especially since we cover a vast area with different laws and other requirements. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without true cloud technology. Depending on which country you access it from, our cloud- based configuration will render the appropriate programs in terms of tax tables and other resources, but it’s still one system. In addition, since the data is super sensitive, the cloud platforms we use are all ISO certified, and they are SOC 1 and 2 compliant. I don’t think we would have been able to give our clients that level of comfort, from an IT and data security point of view, had we not used these cloud technologies GPA: What is one thing you
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ISSUE 18 GLOBAL PAYROLL MAGAZINE
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