|
The key to designing accurate expatriate
compensation packages - March 2008 edition on sale
|
Consider these questions...
 Have you evaluated the cost-effectiveness of
your expatriate management process?
Are you
really solving your mobility issues by granting generous
cost of living allowances?
Is your
process transparent? Does your supplier provide you with all the
information you need to justify your
decisions?
Are your
cost of living allowances based on prices gathered by your
expatriates?
- How can you
keep your compensation approach consistent when transferring
employees from lower-income countries in Eastern Europe or
Asia?
|
Key features
To encourage mobility and to manage your
international assignment costs, you need precise information to
calculate fair, consistent expatriate compensation packages. With
offices in 41 countries and territories, Mercer brings you
factual, objective price information from more than 250 cities
around the world.
Based on over 200
goods and services, our semi-annual surveys are
conducted by professional researchers simultaneously in each of the
250 locations we cover. Carefully chosen vendors reflect only those outlets where
your expatriates can buy goods and services of international quality.
- Mean-to-Mean Index
- Efficient Index
- Convenience
Index
Cost of Living reportsMercer’s Cost of Living reports provide all the key elements
you need to calculate cost of living allowances as well as
the supporting information required to ensure full acceptance and
understanding of the results.  View
sample cost of living
report
City-to-City comparison
Mercer’s cost of living indices are designed for
today’s multinational companies that transfer employees to and from a
multitude of countries. Our unique international basket of goods and
services is the result of extensive research of actual expatriate spending
habits, allowing our indices to reflect actual international spending
patterns.
Mercer provides three cost of
living indices to accommodate differences in shopping
habits:
-
The Convenience Index applies to a less-experienced shopper, or a newcomer in the
location, and compares the average of the low and mid prices in the base
city to the high prices in the host city (except for selected categories
for which it compares mean base prices).
|
Our indices comprise the following
categories, weighted according to our
research results:
|
Alcohol and tobacco
Clothing and footwear
Domestic services
Food at home
Food away from home |
Personal care
Household supplies
Sports and leisure
Transportation
Utilities |
Home country spendable income tables
The Spendable Income Tables report the typical amount an employee
spends on goods and services in his/her home country.
Used in conjunction with our COL indices, they
support you in determining appropriate cost of
living allowances.
These reality-based Spendable Income Tables are based on
national statistics for major countries. The tables are broken down by income
level and family size, from single employees to couples with four children.
International Spendable Income Tables: compensating
employees from low income countries
If the spendable income portion of a salary is too
small, no index can adjust it to make it sufficiently
competitive.
To address this problem, Mercer
has developed International Spendable Income Tables, which allow companies to
substitute non-competitive home country spendable income with benchmark
spendable income levels. The International Spendable Income Tables provide you
with the ability to develop competitive spendable incomes for your employees
wherever they come from, while allowing you to keep a consistent "home country"
compensation approach.
Home country housing norms tables
These tables provide the hypothetical amounts that
employees normally spend on housing in their home country and are used to
determine the employee’s contribution towards housing costs in the host country.
Tables are broken down by income level and family size, from single employees to
couples with four children.
Expatriate accommodation cost tables
Mercer’s host city
accommodation tables are designed to help you in determine the housing allowance
for your employees when transferred abroad. Monthly housing rental cost is provided
in three tables for each host location.
Tables by area
provide monthly rental costs for different sized apartments and
houses; furnished and unfurnished; in good, very good and the best
residential areas.
Tables by income level and number of bedrooms provide expatriates’ monthly
rental costs for an apartment with 1 to 4 bedrooms or for a house
with 3 to 4 bedrooms.
Tables by income level and family size provide an average monthly accommodation
rental cost by family size, including both apartments and houses. |
International education cost tables
Mercer’s International Education Cost Tables provide
accurate information on tuition and fees for different schools: American,
English, French, German, International, Italian, Japanese and Scandinavian.
Business travel expenses tables
Mercer’s Travel Expenses Tables provide a daily
allowance rate, representing typical daily costs for employees on business
trips. The data cover hotels, meals, taxis and miscellaneous expenses.
Actual price list
The full price list and list of stores and sources
supporting the COL index ensures that our process is completely
transparent. For example, it lets you demonstrate why city A is 20% more
expensive than city B. Short-term assignment allowance tables
Mercer’s Short-Term Assignment Allowance Tables
let you compensate your employees for daily living costs whilst on
short-term assignments.
|
Mercer has developed
appropriate categories of expenses to help you determine this daily
allowance for your employees transferred temporarily abroad on a
single status: |
|
|
|
Learn more information and order the reports online
Global HRMonitor® - a new dimension of online HR information
Mercer’s web-based application contains flexible
and powerful calculators that enable you to customise our COL information
to meet your specific requirements.
Cost of Living Index Calculator provides flexibility, allowing you to adjust our COL
indices for exchange rate, inflation and unavailable products in the
host location. You can easily customise the COL index components and
access the actual price list that supports the index.
Cost of Living Allowance Calculator calculates the
actual COLA (cost of living allowance)
amount based on your employee's base salary, family size and spendable
income portion of their salary.
Spendable Income, Home Housing Norm and Savings Calculator uses actual national spending statistics to
instantly estimate spending patterns, identify those components of
spending that need to be compensated for, and to allow for
differentiation based on family size and income level. The result is a
more accurate spendable income estimate and home housing norm for you to
use when developing expatriate compensation.
-
Short-Term Assignment Allowance Calculator
determines the daily living costs of your employees on short-term
assignments. It allows you to adjust Mercer's standard basket to meet
your specific needs - you can add, remove, or change the frequency and
quantity of items in the daily allowance.
Expatriate Compensation Calculator
helps you build expatriate compensation packages applying the home country
balance sheet approach. The calculator details each step of the process allowing
you to make your own adjustments.
Pricing information
Cost of Living Reports
(The report includes: city-to-city index
comparison, spendable income table, home country housing norms, expatriate
accommodation costs, education costs, business travel expenses and actual
price list.)
Price per city Complete report |
USD 585 / EUR 450* |
|
* All prices are subject to additional shipping charges and applicable taxes.
Note: In Australia and Canada your purchase confirmation will show the estimated converted price in local currency, however you will be invoiced at the converted USD price at the time of purchase. | 
