Post-COVID work settings focus on advantages, challenges of global mobility

The pandemic has had a profound impact on the nature of the workplace, including upending long-held beliefs about the physical location of employees.

“The impacts of COVID-19, advancement of technologies, broadening scope of workforce mobility, increased focus by governments to track and share tax and immigration data — together with the benefits of offering more internationally flexible work patterns in the fight to attract, retain and motivate talent — have combined to light a fuse on the evolution of global mobility,” according to a new report from Vialto Partners. “The result? It all means that the foundations for mobility that were laid pre-2020 need to be rebuilt.”

Vialto recently surveyed nearly 200 global companies about how they are approaching global mobility. Researchers found that keeping compliant with workforce mobility remains top of mind for most companies, because it’s essential to maintaining the company’s license to operate worldwide

”Enhancing mobility policies is also a top focus for companies right now,” the report said. “We’re seeing these enhancements range from rethinking the balance between high-tech and high-touch support for mobile employees, to enhancing flexibility in the package and benefits provided by giving more flexibility and discretion to the business, to designing new policies for the newer types of international working.”

Looking ahead two years from now, aligning talent with mobility becomes the top priority. Many companies believe their mobility programs can become more purposeful but that input is needed from their talent and talent acquisition teams. The reasons include:

• Helping embed and promote the benefits of international experience on career development and professional networks;
• Enabling international resourcing and recruiting so roles can be filled by skilled people from within the global company; and
• Helping prevent talented people from leaving the company as they feel it’s often “easier to leave, than to find a new role/work overseas with my current company.”

Using mobility data and analytics to provide insights to business leaders is the second-leading priority for the next two years, jumping from 5% today to 26% in 2025.

“Having an integrated ‘one source of truth’ data platform is what we’re seeing many companies set to be one of their key strategic goals, informing their short-term and tactical decisions made in the meantime to achieve this ambition,” the report said. “In order to deliver on these priorities, mobility teams need to push for and drive change. However, there is acknowledgment that the capacity of the mobility team, investment costs and a lack of leadership buy-in can all hinder delivery.”

Mobility teams could reconsider in-house tasks and explore the use of technology, process simplification and vendors to release capacity. There also is a need to share a compelling business case with leadership, setting out the vision for how workforce mobility, done well, can enable the company to deliver better business performance and attract, engage and retain top talent.

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“From our research, it is clear that the role of mobility is changing, whether leaders are looking to build on the foundations of their mobility program or revolutionize the program and model more broadly,” the report concluded. “Companies have an opportunity to reflect on what they want and need from mobility and transform accordingly to maximize the value the business and the workforce get from the mobility program.”