The strength of your international tax team is key to your success in the region! Developing an effective strategy for building and managing an international tax team is critical to your success when operating in a foreign location. You must have a well-defined strategy that ensures a more expedient hiring process; understand the market availability of the technical tax expertise required for this role and recognize the value of attracting premium performers to your foreign locations. These strategies will help lead you to success and strengthen your company’s international performance in these regions. It has been proven that there is a direct link between the satisfaction of your tax team and a company’s financial performance. When your tax team is satisfied with the way they are being treated they will be more engaged to work at saving your company more tax dollars.
How do you go about hiring someone in a foreign location? Do you have a process that ensures you will have a superior result? There must be a well-defined strategy for hiring in the region. However, you must take the time to outline what is really important to you in the region and stay focused on that goal. Is it more important to hire someone locally or is it more important to have someone who is well-trained on the organization’s needs? Perhaps, you need someone in the region to be watchful of all of the transactions and ensure that you are in line with the local laws and customs. Perhaps, the emphasis is more on compliance within the foreign country jurisdictions. Whatever it is, it is imperative that you have a strategy and understand what is really important in the role. Locating hires in a foreign location is a lengthy process and you must be knowledgeable in the process and understand exactly what you can expect in this type of undertaking. Otherwise, you will have great potential to waste much valuable time or under hire for the role thereby effecting your organization’s performance in the region. One of the most common ways to waste resources is having a misunderstanding of the availability of the talent pool in the region. Some organizations waste considerable time and money searching the market over for the technical tax expertise they seek, only to discover that the person does not exist in the region or the salary they are offering is incongruous with the technical expertise they require for the role. Unfortunately, sometimes you may not even find out until you learn the hard way! However, know when to call in the experts to get the job done to your satisfaction.
How do you attract the best performers to your company? What are tax professionals seeking when they consider joining your organization? There are five primary motivators that will interest the very top performers to your tax organization. 1) The company management team must see the tax department as important to the organization. 2) The company must offer the exceptionally engaged tax professional challenging and interesting work. 3) The company must provide the higher performance tax professional with decision-making authority. 4) The company must offer exceptional tax professionals with career advancement opportunities. 5) The company must compensate the tax professional competitively in the market. All of these factors are important in engaging the very best tax professionals in your worldwide locations. In the end, the strength of your international tax team and your strategy to attract and retain these tax professionals and their very unique talents will determine your organization’s success and performance in the region.
Kathleen Jennings
