Organizations worldwide made cost-saving adjustments to their international assignment programs during the economic downturn, but continued to send assignees overseas in order to take advantage of business opportunities, according to the results of the 2009 Global Assignment Policies and Practices survey, conducted by KPMG LLP, the U.S. audit, tax and advisory firm.

"As the decline in the global economy affected almost every area of business and most companies assessed the cost-effectiveness of their operations, international assignments were no exception," said Achim Mossmann, managing director of Global Mobility Advisory Services in KPMG LLP's International Executive Services (IES) practice.

"The KPMG survey results mirror our experience with clients," Mossmann added. "We saw that companies/employers often adjusted parts of their programs and examined alternate assignment types based on their business needs, but continued to send assignees to work on long-term business opportunities overseas."

According to the 470 human resources (HR) executives surveyed, organizations are implementing a variety of options to potentially save costs associated with long-term or standard assignments. Some of these options include short-term assignments (STAs), currently being used by 79 percent of organizations, and permanent transfers, utilized by 45 percent of organizations.

The KPMG survey also revealed that companies made changes to various policy provisions to save costs. For example, to help determine the cost of living adjustment (COLA) calculation on their assignee packages, 31 percent of the organizations surveyed are using an "efficient purchaser index" - a sliding scale measurement of the ratio of the cost-of-living between the home and host locations, which assumes that an experienced assignee is a "smart shopper" and is able to purchase goods and services more economically than the average (newly arrived) assignee.

Forty-nine percent of respondents find that assignees take too much time to administer, according to the KPMG survey. Perhaps in response to this view, almost half (47 percent) of respondents outsource parts of their international assignment programs to gain access to a service provider's global resources and expertise.

"In some cases, HR departments have been downsized leaving fewer people to manage more work," said Mossmann. "In these situations, administrative models are often reviewed to achieve efficiency and cost savings. Outsourcing certain program elements can help reduce the time and effort spent by HR professionals and allows the organization to tap into the economies of scale in an outsourcing environment."

"Our discussions with clients reflect the survey results indicating that reducing program costs are top of mind for HR executives," said Ben Garfunkel, national partner in charge of KPMG LLP's IES practice. "As organizations continue to utilize international assignments, they also need to make sure there is a mechanism in place to measure how these assignments provide long-term benefits to the organization."