One of the most thought-provoking discussions at the recent International Employment Lawyer (IEL) Global Summit in New York was Two Worlds of Work: Global Trends vs US Direction of Travel, a session that explored an increasingly pressing challenge for multinational organisations – how to maintain a coherent workforce strategy when employment laws are moving in very different directions across the world.
The panel session was chaired by Miriam Lampert, Partner and brought together perspectives from Kathleen McAchran (Sonos), Joanna Chen (TikTok) and Employment Partners from Brazil, UAE and India – Patricia Barboza, Luke Tapp and Apeksha Mattoo.
Here are our three key takeaways from the session:
1. The compliance gap between jurisdictions is widening
It is no secret that the US has traditionally approached employment regulation differently to much of the rest of the world, but that gap is becoming increasingly stark. Around the globe, we’re seeing a wave of new regulation, covering greater transparency obligations, stronger worker protections and more scrutiny of employer decision-making. Meanwhile, much of the US appears to be swimming against that tide, continuing to chart a distinctly employer-friendly course.
That obviously creates huge challenges for global businesses, and particularly for HR and in-house employment lawyers, who are being tasked by leadership with rolling out global policies and taking standardised approaches to employee-related issues across their businesses globally.
The question facing multinational employers is therefore no longer simply how to comply with local laws. It is how to maintain a coherent global approach as regulatory expectations increasingly pull in different directions.
2. Global consistency does not mean global uniformity
Many global organisations strive for consistency. Common policies can support governance, reinforce culture and create operational efficiencies. However, a recurring theme throughout the discussion was that global policy rollouts often run into difficulty when employers aim for uniformity, rather than consistency. As one panellist observed, “compliant treatment doesn’t always mean identical treatment”.
The examples discussed ranged from background checks and equal opportunities questionnaires to employee monitoring and remote working arrangements. While the issues themselves were very different, they all illustrated the same point – a policy that works perfectly in one jurisdiction may need to be implemented (and operate) very differently in another because of local legal and cultural constraints.
The experience of the panellists suggests that employers are most successful when they:
- Start with the business objective. Be clear about the outcome the organisation is trying to achieve. That will help determine where global consistency is essential and where local flexibility is acceptable.
- Design for localisation from the outset. Build policies around common global principles, while anticipating that implementation may need to vary across jurisdictions.
- Identify implementation barriers early. Assess not only whether a policy is legally compliant, but whether it can actually be implemented and enforced in practice, taking account of issues such as consultation obligations, privacy restrictions and local procedural and/or consultation requirements.
- Translate legal requirements into operational actions. Managers and HR teams need practical guidance on what they need to, and when, in order to be compliant, plus an overview of the risk if they don’t, not lengthy legal analyses of regulatory change.
3. Bring workforce expertise into business strategy earlier
One of the strongest forward-looking themes from the discussion was that employment law is increasingly shaping business strategy, rather than simply responding to it. The panel touched on issues as varied as AI adoption, return-to-office initiatives, workforce planning, business continuity and organisational change. What these developments have in common is that employment law considerations are becoming central to whether a business objective can be delivered successfully in practice. This is particularly true in the context of AI, where organisations are grappling not only with emerging regulation, but also with broader questions about which workforce decisions can be automated and where human judgement remains essential.
The experience of the panellists suggests that employers are best placed to navigate this increasingly complex environment when they:
- Involve legal and HR teams at the design stage. Employment law risks are often easier and cheaper to address before key strategic decisions have been made. Good people partners, and close partnership between legal and people teams, go a long way.
- Take a multidisciplinary approach. Workforce decisions increasingly require input from variety of stakeholders. Effective coordination is critical to avoid siloed decision-making and implementation risks.
- Focus on implementation as well as legal compliance. Initiatives can fail if they do not properly account for local employment protections, employee expectations or workforce relations issues.
- Invest in governance and escalation processes. Clear ownership, accountability and routes for obtaining local advice become increasingly important as organisations operate across multiple jurisdictions.
- Look ahead, not just at current compliance requirements. The pace of regulatory change means employers need to anticipate emerging trends and incorporate them into workforce planning.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the discussion was that, when asked to look a decade ahead in terms of what key issues employers should have in mind, the panellists spent remarkably little time talking about any particular law or regulation. Instead, they focused on adaptability, trust, governance, reputation and judgement.
That may itself be the lesson. The employment laws will change, the political winds will shift and the next regulatory wave will no doubt arrive sooner than expected. The employers best placed to navigate that uncertainty will be the organisations that build resilient governance frameworks, involve workforce experts early, maintain trust with their people and exercise sound judgement as technology, regulation and workforce expectations continue to evolve.