How do you manage company benefits across multiple countries?

You think triangulating leave in multiple states is bad? Get this:

A non-birth parent who was born in Argentina, had French citizenship, but was on a work visa in the UK sponsored by a US-based company.

He was being reassigned to establish a new Paris office in a few months, so he decided to take half of his parental leave now (right after birth), and the other half in the weeks before he started work in France.

This was the mother of all edge cases. To make things even more complicated:

💀 When he moved from London to Paris, his salary was going to be adjusted (downward) to fit the cost of living.

💀 To make things even more complicated, his UK visa was going to expire on the day his second chunk of leave would start.

“Claire, you’ve been working on our parental leave policy. Can you figure out what to do about Pierre’s situation?”

Here were the constraints:

💀 The day his visa expired in the UK, he would no longer be eligible for UK benefits. So the second chunk of leave would be subject to French laws.

💀 Although he had French citizenship (through his parents), Pierre had never actually lived or paid taxes in France, making him ineligible for payments there.

💀 Still, he was eligible for statutory job protections in both France and the UK.

The company’s US policy was to top up state benefits to full salary for 12 weeks. If Pierre were moving from Boston (strong paid leave) to Austin (no paid leave), the company would top up his salary in Boston and pay his full salary in Austin.

Using that same logic, it was in the company’s interest to max out his benefits in the UK (where he was entitled to a lot of money) vs. France (where he was ineligible for payments).

But how do the claims actually work in the UK?

And if Pierre was entitled to up to 18 weeks of paid paternity leave, but he only took 4 of them before his visa expired... how would that work?

In the UK, the Crown approves your leave duration upfront, but benefits are actually paid by the company. At the end of the year, the company reports how many weeks of leave were actually used, and the Crown reimburses the company for the approved portion. 

It’s a pretty elegant system. Way simpler than our messy American arrangement.

Pierre applied for (and was granted) the full 12 weeks of leave he applied for in the UK. 

He took 2 weeks after the baby was born and returned to work until his planned relocation date. 

On his relocation date, his leave resumed and the company continued paying him his UK paid leave rate (which was more than his Paris salary).

Coincidentally, on that same date, he left the UK as his visa required. 

He spent the next several weeks of his leave, setting his family up in Paris while the company paid him under his statutory UK benefits. 

When he returned to work, he did so as a French citizen.

I’ve changed the countries above to anonymize this person, so if the local statutes don’t work exactly the way I’ve described, that’s why. 🤩Shoutout to Nasreen at Remote who helped me figure this all out. She’s a star.

Except that Pierre actually forgot to file the forms for his second chunk of leave in time. So the company just wound up paying him without the Crown’s subsidies. 

Paperwork is hard.

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