Compliance is a moving target, with laws and regulations changing all the time. For organizations onboarding freelance talent, you can’t be too careful. Global compliance is especially critical for businesses that are hiring talent all over the world, embracing a remote workforce to get the right people in the right place at the right time. While this is great for organizational agility, it opens up new compliance hoops to jump through.
Considering compliance as part of your contingent workforce strategy means understanding your requirements, implementing them in an early and continuous way, and staying on top of evolving risk as it occurs.
This is part of a series of articles about Global Payroll.
Key Areas of Global Compliance
There are a number of elements to consider when your enterprise is building a global compliance strategy. Here are some of the most common:
- Data protection and privacy: Your customers, clients and partners all share sensitive information with your business, and you have a responsibility to keep that secure. Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is governed differently depending on the region, so it’s critical to consider whether you need to comply with specific laws such as GDPR, CCPA, and more.
- Anti-money Laundering and Counter-terrorist Financing: AML laws are part of Know Your Customer regulations, and are in place to support the government in stopping criminals from abusing the financial system. Depending on your location, there are different guidelines and laws in place when remotely onboarding workers, to ensure they are verified and their bank accounts are not being fraudulently used.
- Anti-bribery and corruption: If you work in a relevant industry such as legal or financial organizations, you may need to comply with regulations to train workers in anti-bribery and corruption practices. This could include asking them to sign a form that outlines what they should do if they are approached with a bribe, and what constitutes bribery where the line is blurred — for example, charitable donations or gifts from clients.
- Trade compliance: Depending on your organization and the way it works, you may be subject to both domestic and international trade laws and regulations. This could be anything from import and export compliance, to controls on who you can sell to. These rules are dictated by bodies such as OFAC and FATF, as well as by individual governments.
- Labor laws and human rights: All businesses are subject to a wide range of labor laws, however these are different when hiring freelancers than they are for full-time employees. For example, an organization doesn’t have to pay a freelancer sick pay or vacation days, but many health and safety laws and other regulations do apply, for example legal enforcement of a contract, and protection against discrimination.
Challenges in Global Compliance
There are definitely complexities involved when it comes to global compliance, as the global regulatory landscape is sophisticated, and can even vary from one state to another within the U.S.
More widely, it’s important to manage cultural differences, as what may seem acceptable in one region could be difficult in another. For example, you could enforce a helpful no-blame whistleblowing practice in the U.S, to allow colleagues to come forward if they notice something that could risk compliance. The very same initiative could fail miserably in Japan, where the culture is to value hierarchy and respect over many other priorities.
It’s also critical to keep up with the regular changes to laws and regulations in every country that you do business. Compliance laws are under continual scrutiny, and not knowing about updates is no excuse for being non-compliant.
Make sure to have a playbook at the ready for how you will take action if a problem occurs. For example, in the event of a data breach — who is responsible for reporting and disclosing quickly? When you onboard a new worker, what are the necessary steps to ensure compliance from day one?
Implementing a Global Compliance Program with the Help of Fiverr Enterprise
At Fiverr Enterprise, we support enterprises in assessing their compliance needs, and implementing smart and automated policies and processes that reduce risk.
As part of our end-to-end Freelancer Management Solution (FMS), we can help you understand what legal documents, tax forms, or system access are necessary for freelancers across departments, and then automate the sending, signing and completion of those documents at the earliest possible stages.
We take the liability off your hands, automating tax compliance by gathering all the required forms from your freelancers, and then submitting them to the right authorities when filing season rolls around.
By automating these workflows, you’re simultaneously developing compliance policies and procedures that will support you in proving compliance if the worst occurs. For example, with Fiverr Enterprise you have proof that all signatures have been validated for AML/KYC compliance, that you store documents securely, and have a process in place to alert you before they expire. As you’re outsourcing tax compliance, you can also rest assured that there are no penalties for late or incomplete filing coming your way.
As we’ve said — compliance is a moving target. That’s why ongoing monitoring and auditing is so important. At Fiverr Enterprise, our AI analyzes all of your relationships with freelancers on an ongoing basis, flagging high-risk relationships with a detailed report alongside steps for mitigation. We also integrate directly with your accounting systems to make ongoing compliance over payments and anti-fraud measures much more streamlined.
An automated FMS makes compliance a much simpler ask. You can reduce the reliance on training and awareness programs which are hard to measure the impact of, and often add stress to your teams, and simply automate compliance in the background to run like clockwork. No need to lean on threats or disciplinary measures to get freelancers to provide the right documentation or to ensure HR or hiring managers act with compliance in mind when on or off-boarding talent.
Just simple, frictionless workflows that can get new freelancers compliantly hitting the ground running.
Schedule a 30-min call with one of our workforce experts, and see how it works for yourself.
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