Global employers adapt workforce strategies to local employment laws

Cross-border business has become commonplace, but employment law remains primarily national, leaving multinational employers to reconcile global workforce strategies with different legal requirements from country to country. For HR and in-house legal teams, the challenge is how to deliver a consistent global approach when the legal framework remains local.
That is one of the messages from the latest Chambers Employment guide, updated on 3 September and covering more than 50 jurisdictions. It highlights the growth of cross-border relationships, takeovers and international contracts while employment laws continue to be designed and applied nationally, resulting in different practical requirements for employers operating internationally.
The International Bar Association has also highlighted the challenge. An IBA analysis, The New Rules of Work, says sweeping legislative changes are transforming employment law across numerous jurisdictions, from pay transparency and AI governance to gig worker rights and new wellbeing obligations. For multinational businesses, it says the challenge is how to maintain a coherent workforce strategy as employment laws continue to change country by country, often shaped by local political and economic pressures.
That tension is particularly apparent when businesses restructure. A separate IBA analysis published in July says workforce reductions within multinational organisations are frequently decided at regional or global level, while individual workforce changes remain subject to the employment laws of the countries where employees are based.
So, for employers looking for greater global consistency, where are those differences most likely to cause difficulties? Emma Noble is an employment lawyer based in Pinsent Masons’ Dubai office who advises on international employment matters and I put that question to her.
Emma Noble: “Yes, that's a really good question, Joe, and I think the most common challenge that employers, understandably, want is consistency. They want the same policies, they want the same HR processes, the same approach to workforce changes across their organisation and the difficulty, obviously, is that employment law is an area of law that remains highly driven by local culture, public policy, the government at the time. We know from recent news it can change very frequently in some cases, and it's a very human-facing area of law as well, so it remains highly localised. So despite what clients might often want, it can be very difficult to implement in practice and I think restructuring exercises are a really good example of that. A global business may decide centrally that it needs to reduce headcount and they may want to centralise certain services. I saw an example of that very recently with an entertainment and leisure company wanting to outsource all of their HR and other centralised functions to one particular jurisdiction. They might have this issue and they want to establish a process for doing that across the globe but, obviously, it's not legally straightforward when you've got multiple jurisdictions coming into play. Another example of that might be, for example, where a business has presence, or needs advice in European countries which, as we know, typically have a lot of consultation obligations in redundancy exercises. They might have to work with work councils and employee representatives before any decisions can be implemented. That can really slow down the timeline in comparison with jurisdictions like those in the Middle East, or with the US headquartered businesses, that might be accustomed to implementing redundancies really, really quickly. So again, that can really highlight differences there. Investigations, I think, are another common pressure point. Multinational companies might have a global investigations team, and a standard investigation protocol, but issues like employee interview rights, surveillance, and employee monitoring of communications and data privacy rules, whistleblowing protections, etcetera can be different. So, yes, it's this consistency and wanting to implement things on that one global approach that doesn't work when you're dealing with localised laws.”
Joe Glavina: “What risks arise, Emma, if employers assume that a process which works in one country can simply be applied elsewhere?”
Emma Noble: “Another great question. One of the biggest issues that we typically see and advise clients on is when that local legal requirement is discovered too late, or late in the day, and it makes the problem either bigger, or rectifying it more troublesome. I think a lot of global projects tend to be built around really ambitious implementation deadlines and those deadlines can quickly unravel if the employer discovers midway through a project that certain jurisdictions require consultation or employee representative engagement, regulatory approvals, etcetera, and obviously it's then difficult once the cat's out the bag to roll back from that and the consequences, again, can be significant depending on the jurisdiction. It could be, you've breached a notification to a governmental authority that could result, for example, in some cases in fines or even criminal charges, or it could result in employee claims about the process as well. So, I think the practical and commercial consequences are often just as important to bear in mind as well as the legal ones. An example I've seen recently where that's really come into play - discovering the issue too late - was where a business that I was advising was looking to reduce headcount, make redundancies across a number of jurisdictions. An issue had come up whereby they also needed to discipline somebody. The timelines for disciplinary sanctions and conducting investigations are quite strict under the labour law in some of the GCC countries, and they hadn't factored in the statutory timelines there, and how they overlapped with some of the redundancy timelines. Also, the people involved were unsure of what was going on and it created a lot of uncertainty and employee dissatisfaction in an already very difficult and challenging atmosphere and environment at work. So that was something that we had to get involved in a bit late in the day and help the client to try and rectify.”
Joe Glavina: “What are employers doing to achieve greater global consistency while still allowing for necessary local differences?”
Emma Noble: “So I think one thing that I've seen organisations look to do and implement more recently, in light of this increasingly global and international workforce that many businesses are having to respond to and implement because they see it can be a retention and attraction tool is they are looking to distinguish between global principles and local implementation. So I think gone are the days, first of all, where we see ten different versions of handbooks or policies, or handbooks or policies that have very specific local requirements to one jurisdiction. Instead, they're implementing principle-based policies that can be applied consistently globally because they're in line with the company's values and culture, which should, in an ideal world, transcend to all of the business's operations and then they implement or, in practice, apply those principles on a more localised level with localised teams. So I think that is something that we're increasingly seeing, and I think it's very uncommon now for businesses to have these localised and specific policies and I think that works really well for businesses in light of the increasingly demanding workforce and increasing need and desire from employees to have a good culture. Those principle-based policies can help towards shaping the business's culture as well. I think one thing that I have been speaking to clients about is also their approach to HR and legal team structuring. So again, it's obviously going to be very client specific and dependent on the needs, the size of the workforce, where the workforce is distributed, the sector, any regulatory requirements. But again, I'm tending to see, and I have been advising a number of clients recently, where rather than having ten different HR people in one location just dealing with one specific jurisdiction, they're looking to put in place more robust frameworks and really increasing the knowledge and experience of these professionals so that they can deal with multiple jurisdictions, and obviously that does require a degree of training and upskilling and getting the right people involved. It also obviously important to make sure that you've got the right external counsel at times as well. So, yes, we are seeing increasingly more people who are comfortable working on multiple different practice areas and/or across multiple jurisdictions and therefore reflecting this increasingly global workforce that they're having to deal with.”
So, the key point is that a consistent global approach does not necessarily mean applying the same process in every country. Employers need to establish their global principles while allowing for local employment laws and requirements when those principles are put into practice.
Pinsent Masons has responded to the growing complexity of international workforce issues by establishing Employment Across Borders, its dedicated international employment projects team. Emma is part of that team and is currently helping clients manage the balance between global consistency and local requirements. If you would like help with this, please do contact Emma. Her details are on screen for you.