Agile workforce: Companies redefining mobile work, survey finds

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n the past few years, the pendulum has swung from remote work triggered by the pandemic to return-to-the-office mandates to various types of hybrid arrangements. Now, employers and workers both are reevaluating the structure of a mobile, agile workforce.

“A new era for mobility is emerging,” according to Vialto Partners, which serves the global mobility industry. “Against a backdrop of employers encouraging their workforce to return to the office, employees’ expectation of what the office represents has changed. The new post-COVID normal has morphed into alternative ways of working and the evolution of flexible mobility types. A more agile workforce has been born, expanding the remit of global mobility beyond traditional mobility.”

Vialto recently surveyed more than 450 companies worldwide about remote work and mobility trends. Among the findings:

• What it means to be mobile has expanded. Short-term international remote work and virtual assignments have risen in prevalence. External factors have caused seismic shifts in non-traditional mobility programs. Organizational flexibility has allowed employers to continue business operations in response to these changes and over time, a new normal has emerged.
• Mobility continues to expand, with variations on options to move people from a permanent transfer to a rotation program. This further underscores the evolution of mobility and its growing importance within the organization, providing the right options to support the business and employee value proposition objectives.
• After its initial boom during the COVID pandemic, there was speculation that remote working would decline as employees returned to pre-pandemic ways of working. Instead, the employer-led push to have employees return to the office has been softened by the introduction of more formal hybrid remote work and temporary international remote work policies and programs.
• Over the past year, employers increasingly have taken control over the hybrid working pattern. Employee freedom that existed post-COVID to dictate their office schedule definitely has waned.

“Across many and varied business models, organization sizes and industry sectors, we saw surprising consistency around the demand for this new agile workforce,” the report said. “There was commonality in how organizations have responded and where there still is work to do. There was a strong correlation between organizations that prioritize talent retention and those that enable employee flexibility through non-traditional international mobility types.”

Related: Remote work roles dropped 25% since 2021, employees pushing RTO mandates

A common thread across industries is that as organizations open up employee-led flexibility, there is a tendency to increase the guardrails and governance around it to manage the associated risk. However, different sectors place varying levels of importance on certain risk areas. Organizational culture and the tone set by senior leadership affect how both employer-driven and employee-driven flexibility evolve.

“The COVID pandemic has irreversibly expanded the landscape of workforce mobility,” the survey report concluded. “Our survey reveals a shift from unprecedented constraints to innovative, agile forms of mobility, reshaping the global workforce. Now, global mobility teams are pivotal, leveraging their cross-border expertise to navigate this new work. We are seeing the start of a decade where global mobility has moved from the niche to the mainstream.”