Fox Williams forms XBHR to debate human resources

City firm Fox Williams has become a founder member of a group of employment lawyers and human resources (HR) professionals who have formed an international think-tank to discuss issues in the HR world.

XBHR is a multi-disciplinary association for HR professionals, membership of which is by invitation only.

It aims to create an international network for members to raise the profile and influence the development of cross-border employment law as a specific area of practice.

Other founding members include US law firm Proskauer Rose, Spanish-based Sagardoy & Abogados, and in-house professionals at IBM and the Hong Kong office of Intel.

Fox Williams partner Clare Murray, chairwoman of XBHR, said: 'As far as we are aware, this is the first association which looks specifically at cross-border employment and HR issues, rather than just comparing the different systems in different countries.'

She added that XBHR was unusual in that it was open to all HR-related disciplines.

'HR and employment law is a classic multi-disciplinary environment - for example, I deal constantly with HR, immigration, tax, pensions and benefits specialists.'

Last September, Ius Laboris, a grouping of international law firms specialising in pensions, employment and employee benefits work, chose City firm Lewis Silkin as its English member.

Fox Williams had been in talks to join the network.

XBHR is intended to work as a high-level think-tank, and Ms Murray said its first meeting in March would produce a number of short papers on various topics discussed.

'Hopefully the group will be able to influence debate about these issues at a high level, as there is not presently a huge amount of legislation about cross-border employment issues,' she said.

The forum will meet annually, and future plans include a Web-based newsletter and bi-annual conference calls for members.

Making up the founder members are: PricewaterhouseCoopers (UK), Management Practices Group (US), Hewitt Associates (Belgium), and lawyer and HR consultant Donald Dowling, who is vice-chairman.

Victoria MacCallum