As companies move employees across borders to enable global growth, talent mobility has become a key contributor to an organisation’s overall success, yet the role of human resources and mobility functions in equipping their companies with the right talent is more challenging and critical than ever before.In their efforts to address current talent challenges, companies are increasingly choosing to integrate HR, talent and succession planning, and global mobility programmes in particular, with business planning at the highest level.Shifting to a shared services model is increasingly attractive as a means of helping streamline the administrative aspects of employing a mobile workforce.Along with the shift in ownership of the global mobility function, the nature of mobility’s role has evolved beyond its traditional scope. More and more companies are looking to global mobility to be a strategic partner and to act from a proactive and predictive standpoint versus a reactive one.Global mobility is now relied upon to extend and expand beyond a transactional position and assume ownership of a variety of responsibilities, including:

• Manage compliance and risk related to immigration and tax compliance
• Reduce employee productivity loss through the delivery of an excellent transferee/assignee experience, so the employee can concentrate on their new role
• Ensure the organisation realises the best value for the money through effective supply-chain management
• Contribute to the development of a viable and maintainable talent supply
• Promote and support the rapid deployment of key skills and talent
• Develop and deliver meaningful management information to aid business strategy and decisions
• Partner with the business, understand the wider business strategy, and then develop effective communications, policies, and processes to deliver the talent mobility strategy

Programme efficiency, transparency and ROI

Change is both constant and rapid, resulting in the need for quick decisions with global oversight in mobility programmes today. Technology advances have been leveraged to help improve the centralisation of the global mobility function.These advances allow corporations to maintain regional workers and administration but centralise overall programme management. This results in greater consistency in administration and service delivery, as well as improved global reporting capabilities.Centralisation helps further to amplify the importance of regional mobility teams. Companies are able to harness regional expertise and local perspective, while enabling ongoing collaboration between the centralised mobility team and the regional teams.Utilising communication technologies such as screen sharing, chatting over video, and even getting to know each other personally through social media help global teams work together in real time.As global mobility teams expand in terms of size and responsibility, they must become rapidly agile in deploying policies and service providers to offer employees the relocation support they need and desire. This is likely to be an ongoing challenge − one that we don’t expect to subside any time soon.Organisations are using mobility data to make policy and deployment decisions that lead to more valid and defendable forecasts. These forecasts provide senior management with appropriate, real-time tools in a sleek, deliverable to formulate projections regarding organisational objectives and mobility programme outcomes.Accurate and complete data leads to reporting and metrics that tell a powerful story, which is invaluable to secure international leadership backing for global mobility programme additions or enhancements.The result is a streamlined, standardised, employee-centric approach that comprises fewer customised policies and exceptions, more accurate mobility metrics, and firmer compliance. This provides transparent delivery of benefits that is easily tracked and reported to management to match real-time touchpoints in their regions.  With a more precise methodology, those in the field are able to report their improvements, progress, failures, and areas of improvement without any data being lost in translation or communication transfer. The communication gap becomes smaller, business relationships become more fortified in trust and experience, and the senior leadership needed to manage these teams becomes smaller and more intimate, which is ultimately more profitable for an organisation through building effective, regional mobile business units.

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Relocate magazine's Spring 2017 issue is available online.
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