Factors such as climate, disease and sanitation standards, ease of communications, and physical remoteness can often affect the success of a foreign assignment. Moreover, the local political and social environment, political violence, and crime may give rise to potentially uncomfortable, inconvenient, or even dangerous situations. To encourage mobility, reliable information is needed to help calculate fair, consistent expatriate compensation for hardship locations.
The benefit of two approaches
Mercer offers two ways to compensate mobile employees fairly for going to a host site with a lower quality of living than that in their home location. Quality of Living Reports (QOL) recommend a point-to-point comparison assignment premium in order to recognize differences in home and host conditions. Location Evaluation Reports (LER) assess living conditions against generally accepted standards, providing a single premium recommendation for all assignees, regardless where they come from.
Quality of Living Reports
Mercer’s Quality of Living Reports contain all the key elements you need to calculate hardship allowances based on a home-host combination for transfers to more than 500 cities worldwide.
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Location Evaluation Reports
Location Evaluation Reports assess 140 locations worldwide on 14 factors that make up daily life for expatriates and their families.
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