HR Audit Services in Europe for US Companies
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Performing a comprehensive HR audit is one of the first steps in outsourcing your Human Resources tasks to an outside company. It is also essential for US companies that are expanding to Europe.

HR audit services in Europe for US companies are important because they provide several key pieces of information:

  • A baseline of your current operations
  • Any gaps in your current HR strategies
  • Areas in which you are noncompliant with local or national laws
  • Redundancies and inefficiencies in your workflow

Audits are useful for every business, from small to large. However, they are especially important for US companies that are in the process of expanding to include European operations.

Europe HR Solutions provides a comprehensive HR audit to help your US company launch in Europe

We provide an HR audit that will help you prepare for your expansion from the US into Europe.

Our audits are performed by experienced, highly trained human resources professionals who work with US and British companies that are expanding into mainland Europe. The potential for costly mistakes when running an international operation is high; a strong HR audit can help you strategize for your expansion.

The human resources profession has developed a thorough, detailed process for conducting HR audits. This process takes time in all three stages: the planning stage, the audit stage, and the analysis stage.

This next section provides a simple overview of the most common steps in the process. Note that each of the three stages includes several steps.

Stage 1: Planning the audit

You can’t conduct a strong audit without a strong planning stage.

At this point in the process, your goal is to determine what you need your audit to cover, who is going to conduct the audit, and what data you need to prepare before the audit takes place.

Choose your audit team

Technically, you can conduct an audit on your own. We don’t recommend it because we have seen what happens when an insufficient audit is completed by someone who doesn’t have enough experience in HR – especially European HR. It gets messy, complicated, and expensive to fix.

Even if you make the smart decision to outsource your audit, you still need people in your organization to serve as part of the audit team.

Consider including:

  • Someone from your HR department
  • In-house legal representative
  • Subject matter experts for your industry
  • Someone from the Mergers & Acquisitions team (if you have one)
  • An executive team member with extensive knowledge of the company
A person’s hand moving a chess piece on a board

Determine the scope of your audit

There are many kinds of audits, and your process may include one or more of them. They include:

  • Corporate structure audit
  • Overall compliance assessment
  • Preparation for corporate restructuring
  • Mergers and acquisitions
  • Payroll compliance
  • Health and safety policies
  • General payroll audit (wages and salaries)
  • Worker data privacy audit
  • Corporate social responsibility/ethics audit
  • Supplier compliance
  • Labor practices audit
  • Employment law compliance
  • Industry-specific issues
  • Immigration compliance issues
  • Compliance with all registration forms
  • Liability audit

Create checklists–lots of checklists

Even though there are some business operations that are very similar in both the US and Europe, there are many, many differences that will affect your day-to-day operations. Checklists are going to help you determine just how many of those US-to-Europe changes you need to be aware of.

After determining the scope of your audit, you will need a checklist of all the rules related to each aspect of the checklist.

You might find some generic checklists online, but we recommend creating an entirely new document that is specific to your company’s expansion into Europe.

One great strategy is to create a master checklist that can be divided into multiple sub-level checklists. That way, you can provide checklists to the relevant people in your company without weighing them down with the master checklist.

Your checklist will likely include the following:

  • Corporate tax laws
  • Insurance rules
  • Payroll laws & payroll deductions
  • Mandatory vacation time and PTO (PTO is usually referred to as “leave entitlement” in Europe)
  • Contract overviews
  • Local employment laws
  • Benefits and compensation offerings
  • Incentive plans for employees
  • Tuition benefits
  • Collective labor laws and collective bargaining agreements
  • Laws related to recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, overtime, etc
  • Discrimination, harassment, and diversity rules
  • Procedures in the event of accusation of discrimination against any protected identity groups
  • Laws related to required local languages
  • HR policies for internal employment complaints
  • Procedures for internal investigations
  • Whistleblower protections
  • Management of labor disputes
  • Works agreements with the European Works Council 
  • Reduction-in-force policies
  • Laws governing headquarters locations
  • Pension and retirement laws
  • Mandatory cost of living/inflation-adjusted raises
  • Severance pay policies
  • Succession planning
  • Employee handbook rules
  • Local laws regarding information posted in the workplace
  • Global crisis/pandemic plans
  • Security protocols
  • Ethics guidelines for employees
  • Contract language compliance
  • Adherence to data privacy laws for employee data
  • Policies for notifying employees of a data breach
  • Contractor laws
  • Immigration policies
  • Expatriate compliance
  • Duty of care protections for business travel, personal injuries, etc.
  • Compliance with overseas supply chain labor monitoring
  • Adherence to the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 (if your expansion includes a UK presence)

This is not a comprehensive list, but it does give you a good starting point of many of the things you need to consider for your HR audit.

For each of these issues, create a smaller checklist that includes things like conducting research to find all relevant European and country-specific laws, appointing a team member to oversee the area, and determining what metrics will be used to measure success.

HR Audit Services in Europe

Stage 2: Conduct the audit

Stage 1 is pretty intense, but Stage 2 is where the work gets really granular and labor-intensive. 

If you work with an auditor like Europe HR Solutions, we will already have all of the latest information about European laws, including EU regulations and country-specific laws–and how those are different from the US. 

What we will need from you is access to your existing policies and company data. 

Conducting this audit independently comes with a number of risks. 

First, you may miss something small but important. Small mistakes can put you out of compliance with European authorities, which in turn jeopardizes your expansion into Europe. 

Second, non-compliance is expensive. Data protection non-compliance on its own was a source of major fines for companies operating in Europe. At the top of the list of the biggest fines was Meta, which was fined €405 million for data privacy violations in Ireland. Many other companies saw fines that were in the €10-20 million range. 

Third, and finally, an ill-prepared audit may make you unprepared to keep up with your European competitors. Even if you don’t get caught by the European authorities for your mistakes, there will be people who notice. You will lose out on prospective employees, contracts, and more because you are not doing what is expected of European employers. 

Stage 3: Analyze the audit

Completing the audit without analyzing the results is like cooking yourself a delicious meal – but not eating it.

You have worked so hard to gather the required information, collect data, research policies, and answer complicated questions. Now you have to do something with the information that you have gathered. 

The analysis stage is all about identifying what is working well and what needs to change so that you can develop a series of action plans. 

Consider these questions as you analyze your HR audit: 

  1. What are we doing well, and how can we make sure that we continue to perform well in these areas?
  2. Which policies are completely absent and therefore need to be created from scratch?
  3. Which policies need to be revised in order to be compliant with European and country-specific laws?
  4. What is our time frame for completing these revisions?
  5. Who is our point person for each policy change?

Trust Europe HR Solutions to Conduct an Outstanding HR Audit

At Europe HR Solutions, we perform thorough and detailed HR audit services in Europe for HR companies for our clients who are expanding into Europe. 

Navigating the labor law landscape in Europe isn’t easy, and you don’t have to try to do it on your own. 

When you trust our experienced, knowledgeable human resources professionals to perform this audit, you get the benefit of working with a team that already knows the ins and outs of European labor law – including the laws in each country where you might be expanding your operations. 

Our auditors give you the chance to focus on growing your business instead of feeling stressed and overwhelmed about the complex compliance issues of operating in Europe. 

Contact us for a free consultation!

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        Success stories & testimonials

        Explore real success stories from companies that have scaled across Europe with HR audits, HR consulting, and HR outsourcing, proving that HR compliance can drive growth.

        Jess Clark
        It is a pleasure working with Inez; she and her team of experts are incredibly knowledgeable and professional. I can contact her and feel confident in knowing that I will receive accurate guidance.
        Jess Clark
        It is a pleasure working with Inez; she and her team of experts are incredibly knowledgeable and professional. I can contact her and feel confident in knowing that I will receive accurate guidance.
        Jess Clark
        Jess Clark
        Christina Lambourne
        Europe HR Solutions have been vital to the HR journey of our business. To begin with we had two small acquired businesses and one newly founded company which all needed some structure and a lot of knowledge as a good foundation. Inez’ team in UK, Germany,...
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        Christina Lambourne
        Europe HR Solutions have been vital to the HR journey of our business. To begin with we had two small acquired businesses and one newly founded company which all needed some structure and a lot of knowledge as a good foundation. Inez’ team in UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands have been hugely supportive and were fundamental to put in place the solid policies and the processes we now have in place. Their highly professional approach in combination with true empathy and flexibility was a breath of fresh air. We had a true partnership for over 18 months now and know we can rely on the team in day to day as well as critical and more challenging situations. Europe HR Solutions have supported us with recruitment, general HR advisory, policies, TUPE, Coaching, redundancies, and everything in between. As the CFO for the business, I’m eternally grateful for all the very practical and human support I have received to date and look forward to continuing this relationship.
        Christos Kartalis
        Europe HR Solutions was main HR/Legal lead for a major restructuring in Europe in 2006. Amazing cross/dept/areas knowledge, keenly results oriented, jelled with the team with decisive (especially for a "consultant") and highly accountable attitude. Europe HR Solutions are a amazing professionals, making things "easier" for management. I ...
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        Christos Kartalis
        Europe HR Solutions was main HR/Legal lead for a major restructuring in Europe in 2006. Amazing cross/dept/areas knowledge, keenly results oriented, jelled with the team with decisive (especially for a "consultant") and highly accountable attitude. Europe HR Solutions are a amazing professionals, making things "easier" for management. I would work with them at any given next opportunity and would recommend them with out any reservations. Christos Kartalis. CEO, Int'l CIPLA.
        Ignasi Vivas
        I had the pleasure of working with Inez at different levels at American Medical Systems. Inez was able to provide us a Strategic view of what Human Resources can provide to an organization by being a true partner. With her as a leader, we were able to build processes as ...
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        Ignasi Vivas
        I had the pleasure of working with Inez at different levels at American Medical Systems. Inez was able to provide us a Strategic view of what Human Resources can provide to an organization by being a true partner. With her as a leader, we were able to build processes as well as development plans, that helped us to move from a small to a mid size company. She guided us to always focuse on people, which lead us to become a stronger and bigger organization.
        Andy Brown
        Europe HR Solutions have provided exceptional service consistently over a number of years to Genea Biomedx in Europe. As a business head quartered in Australia with no inhouse HR support on the ground in Europe this has been invaluable, not only during the start-up phase but also as the business ...
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        Andy Brown
        Europe HR Solutions have provided exceptional service consistently over a number of years to Genea Biomedx in Europe. As a business head quartered in Australia with no inhouse HR support on the ground in Europe this has been invaluable, not only during the start-up phase but also as the business has expanded. I highly recommend them.
        Rebecca Richardson
        I had the pleasure of working with Inez Vermeulen and her exceptional team at Europe HR Solutions, and I cannot recommend them highly enough. Over the course of several projects, I collaborated with many team members, and every single one of them exhibited a high level of professionalism, expertise, and ...
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        Rebecca Richardson
        I had the pleasure of working with Inez Vermeulen and her exceptional team at Europe HR Solutions, and I cannot recommend them highly enough. Over the course of several projects, I collaborated with many team members, and every single one of them exhibited a high level of professionalism, expertise, and approachability. From the outset, Inez and her team demonstrated an impressive depth of knowledge in HR solutions, which was instrumental in helping me achieve my project goals. Their commitment to delivering high-quality work is evident in every interaction, and they consistently go above and beyond to ensure the success of their clients. One of the standout qualities of Europe HR Solutions is their approachability. No matter the complexity of the issue, I always felt comfortable reaching out to any team member. Their willingness to listen, provide insightful feedback, and offer practical solutions has been invaluable. This approach fosters a collaborative environment that makes working with them both productive and enjoyable. The dedication of Inez and her team to their clients' success is unparalleled. Their proactive approach and unwavering support have been crucial in navigating the challenges of various projects. I have been consistently impressed by their ability to deliver results on time and with the highest standard of quality. Without hesitation, I would work with Inez Vermeulen and her team at Europe HR Solutions again. Their expertise, combined with their friendly and supportive nature, makes them an outstanding choice for any HR needs. I highly recommend them to anyone looking for a reliable and knowledgeable HR partner.
        Rebecca Richardson
        Rebecca Richardson
        Anouck Cerdan Boillat
        I've been using Europe HR Solutions in countries where the team size doesn't justify hiring a local HR professional, allowing us to maintain a lean HR organization. This solution has been fantastic, offering a high level of expertise. Not only do I benefit from exceptional support, but the HR consultants ...
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        Anouck Cerdan Boillat
        I've been using Europe HR Solutions in countries where the team size doesn't justify hiring a local HR professional, allowing us to maintain a lean HR organization. This solution has been fantastic, offering a high level of expertise. Not only do I benefit from exceptional support, but the HR consultants also provide valuable insights into best practices. The team is engaged, available, and knowledgeable. I highly recommend their services to any company seeking top-quality HR support.
        Anouck Cerdan Boillat
        Anouck Cerdan Boillat
        Scott Rude
        Europe HR Solutions are talented, experienced and creative professionals. When we needed expertise in the European market for our personnel needs we experienced exceptional service and insight from them. They know the market and have the resources/network to get answers to the tough issues facing a U.S. company ...
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        Scott Rude
        Europe HR Solutions are talented, experienced and creative professionals. When we needed expertise in the European market for our personnel needs we experienced exceptional service and insight from them. They know the market and have the resources/network to get answers to the tough issues facing a U.S. company like ours, who does not have a core competency in Europe. Europe HR Solutions has my highest respect and appreciation for their service to our company. I would be glad to provide insight on their skills at any time. Scott Rudi, snrude@yahoo.com
        John Hardin
        Europe HR Solutions are exceptional Human Resources professionals and fully understand the nuance and complexity of creating employment contracts in the various EU geographies. They also have a keen eye for talent, particularly for startups, and have been extremely helpful in identifying quality hires. I highly recommend them for HR ...
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        John Hardin
        Europe HR Solutions are exceptional Human Resources professionals and fully understand the nuance and complexity of creating employment contracts in the various EU geographies. They also have a keen eye for talent, particularly for startups, and have been extremely helpful in identifying quality hires. I highly recommend them for HR consultation to any executive building an organization in Europe.
        Paul Grafham
        Europe HR Solutions has consistently delivered high quality work in all of the projects that she has been involved in. The professional approach that they display is combined with a very personable manner, which has helped integrate them into the AngioDynamics team, and their expertise has assisted significantly in the ...
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        Paul Grafham
        Europe HR Solutions has consistently delivered high quality work in all of the projects that she has been involved in. The professional approach that they display is combined with a very personable manner, which has helped integrate them into the AngioDynamics team, and their expertise has assisted significantly in the growth of the international business. I would not hesitate to recommend Europe HR Solutions and the consultancy services offered, and believe they would be an asset to any organisation.

        Resources to help you stay compliant and grow

        Your compliance challenges are unique, and so are the solutions we share. Explore curated insights designed to help your business thrive across Europe and stay on top of the latest news and updates in international HR.