As multinational firms deal with the challenges of a global economy, an area of increasing interest is the promise of rewards related to smart management of global benefits administration.

On paper, optimization of a firm's benefits offering around the world would yield extraordinary benefit opportunities - substantial third-party cost-savings, reduced internal overhead for program and vendor management, and leveraged buying power are three clear outcomes that could be expected of an effective global benefits program.

While such a solution has proven elusive, organizations can consider six steps in their quest to optimize their global benefits.

1. Establish a global governance model.

Governance has a critical role in the success of globalization efforts. Organizations require an effective governance model at the beginning to support their efforts to make the tough decisions needed to establish objectives, eliminate ineffective programs, consolidate vendors and communicate change.

Establishing a centralized project management office will enable the governance function. Stakeholders in all countries need a shared understanding of project status, upcoming activity, areas of risk and required change management.

The payoff for creating a global governance model and supporting project management office is a framework that will establish control and help ensure that decisions are implemented.

2. Establish your global baseline.

You can't manage what you don't measure. Any effort to optimize global benefits requires an inventory of benefit programs supported, countries where they are located, populations they serve, who provides the service and at what cost. It's also important to know if the program is mandated, is a key to market competitiveness and if employees value the offering.

This baseline information provides a database from which you can identify improvement opportunities, define a business case for change, and establish metrics for future monitoring and management reporting. This global baseline also allows you to calculate a return on investment and demonstrate project value.

3. Define global objectives and key markets.

Defining objectives for global benefits requires you to suspend much of what you know so you can clearly envision what you need.Global objectives initially should focus on a "blue sky" vision for the future.

They should establish expectations for service delivery quality, the role of your organization as a plan sponsor and characteristics you will seek in third-party vendors. They should also help ensure a channel for employee feedback and describe how success will be measured.

In evaluating global objectives, focus first on countries and markets where you have the greatest opportunity to realize positive change, both in terms of employees impacted and transformation opportunities.

Specific, targeted objectives can help achieve buy-in from all stakeholders, which is critical to the success of transformation efforts.

4. Define global metrics and management reporting.

Identifying success metrics is critical for the beginning of your global benefits optimization project and should not be an afterthought as the project winds down.

Metrics should include financials (e.g., the cost of benefits per full-time employee), service quality, and employee/stakeholder satisfaction. Link metrics to the company's top and bottom line, and monitor trend closely to evaluate the impact of initiatives on contributions to the business.

By defining metrics first, you provide a roadmap for performance targets that your evolving service delivery model needs to meet, and requirements for performance and management reporting that your data and administration need to support. The payoff is the ability to measure and report success, and adjust for trends that are not in line with objectives.

5. Harmonize programs, policies and vendors.

Many global firms don't have a handle on exactly how many different programs and policies they fund across all of their locations. The first step in harmonization is to inventory programs and policies by location.

If you started with the baseline exercise described in step two, you may already have this information.

If not, this inventory should include the data points noted there and include additional information such as program owners, time the program has been active, employee participation, whether the program is mandated under local regulations and whether the program is critical to market competitiveness.

Inventory vendors to capture a clear understanding of costs, programs, contract terms and service quality. Eliminate vendors that do not offer clear value and instead build relationships where savings and value can be optimized by leveraging the firm's buying power with high-performance vendors.

6. Define and execute an employee communication strategy.

A global benefits transformation will represent a tremendous communication challenge. Effective communications should start at the beginning of a transformation effort and should be frequent as transformation objectives are defined and implemented.

Different audiences for communication should be identified (e.g., change team, stakeholders, employees) and communications should have a consistent brand that truly projects an integrated global initiative.

A successful project will include a detailed communication strategy that is defined at project initiation and adjusted based on measured effectiveness throughout the project lifecycle.

Effectiveness can be measured by audience feedback and by a review of key project health indicators: Is the project on schedule, is it within budget and is expected quality being realized? Often, a breakdown in any of these areas is due in part to ineffective project communications.

The complexities of a global organization and the disparate benefit requirements of markets around the world make it difficult to define a silver-bullet strategy for benefit programs and service delivery.

However, for almost all companies, there are substantial opportunities for optimization and cost-savings that can be identified and implemented with a thoughtful approach to globalization.

Follow EBN on: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Podcasts