For many organisations, delivering a complete end-to-end global mobility experience is a challenging task to achieve. We live in a more technological and globalised world but work is still far from being a simple process. There are multiple structural, organisational and individual factors that explain the complexity of this process and the difficulties faced by workers.
Global Mobility Involves More Than It Appears
Global mobility is not an event, but a process comprising a multitude of activities that need to be in synchronisation. These activities include immigration, tax, payroll, relocation/courier, real estate, benefits and compliance, as well as any ongoing employee engagement required.
A delayed visa can impact the effective start date, accommodation bookings, school places for children and payroll set up. This increases the pressure on the mobility team and makes the relocation experience worse for the employee.
Fragmented Ownership Creates Challenges
Unclear visibility and responsibility is the main obstacle that prevents functions from achieving end-to-end mobility visibility. A wide variety of functions are often involved in the management of mobility within an organisation (HR, Finance, Legal, Procurement, etc).
They may feel that their department is not communicating sufficiently with other departments, which results in having to re-do work that others have already done, misunderstandings and not being able to enforce quality standards. Ultimately, this causes problems for the employees and management as well. It results in more paperwork, more chances for non-compliance and less time to focus on the core activities of the company.
The Gap Between Policy and Reality
The majority of mobility policies are devised with the routines of everyday travel in mind. However, everyday life is full of exceptions and events which do not happen with the same monotony and predictability as usual daily routines.
Some expats work remotely across borders and assignments can vary in length and frequency as families relocate in stages. Additionally, business needs can change quickly and must be accommodated by the global mobility programme.
The variations listed above are not usually covered in standard company policy and have to be interpreted and enforced by field services mobility on a case by case basis. While the need to accommodate flexibility in the way the company does business is recognised, it must be balanced with the need for compliance, making the job of the field services mobility team even more complicated.
The Role and Limitations of Technology
Technology has given us a wider view of our global mobility operations and allowed us to manage more of our business. A whole range of online tools are available which enable us to action work flows, track documents and report on all manner of things. As a result we are able to have a greater level of control over our processes and procedures.
The more technology develops, the more often we notice that not all problems can be solved digitally. Globalisation leads to an increasing amount of exceptions, individual cases and incidents that cannot be solved digitally. Many companies are still using outdated techniques like spreadsheets and emails for dealing with these types of exceptions.
Digital tools are useful, but an end-to-end mobility experience is only as good as the underlying business processes and collaboration between teams.
The Human Element in Mobility
Relocation is more than a simple transfer of paper from one place to another. For the relocating employee, relocation is a significant life changing event. A relocation can be a complex and highly charged event for the individual and their family. The relocating employee and their family must contend with new, unfamiliar and often unpredictable cultural and practical challenges. At the same time, they must be able to carry out their work.
Irrespective of the care taken in planning a move, it is often the employees themselves who can turn what appears to be a well-planned transfer into a traumatic experience. A planned move should provide enough time for explanation and for adjustment to occur. Effective communication is therefore essential in order to achieve a high level of transfer success.
While relocation impact can be largely considered as a tangible aspect of a relocation assignment, the personal impact of a move is one of the fundamental components of a relocation experience and is often the hardest to manage.
Why End-to-End Mobility Remains Challenging
End-to-end global mobility is a complex concept as it intersects with a number of different HR practices and processes. It requires a systems approach, an understanding of employment law and a consideration of individual employee circumstances.
That the elements interact with each other in a suitable way is one of the greatest challenges for complex and decentralised organisations with many different systems. It is difficult enough to achieve real HR integration, but to also manage mobility and achieve a single point of view on this aspect of employment makes the challenges difficult.
A More Integrated Approach to Global Mobility
Alchemy Global Talent Solutions brings your business the benefits of a global network of recruitment, relocation, immigration and global employment services to support your international mobility needs.
Future mobility offers many opportunities to prevent fragmentation and to improve the coordination of operations. In particular, by providing more structured and therefore more rationalised and individualised mobility experiences for staff, an organisation can at the same time meet the requirements of compliance.
