A Global Talent Mobility Strategy Is Becoming An Essential Business Function

We need every option on the table to help retain talent

Before the pandemic, “global talent mobility” referred only to long- and short-term assignments and traditional relocations—companies sending employees to work where they needed them to be. But over the past two years, the definition has greatly expanded to include remote work, work from home—employees working where they want to work—and even business travel as the EU has imposed rules on length of stay.

That means where talent mobility had before touched only a small sliver of the employee population, it now touches many, many more—in fact, depending on your policies, perhaps every employee in the organization.

While this is great news for the workforce, providing the flexibility that employees overwhelming demand brings some serious risks and implications for employers—namely immigration and tax compliance, as well as employee safety and wellbeing. When the pandemic hit, many companies were caught completely unprepared, didn’t know where their employees were and had no realistic mechanism in place for ensuring tax and immigration compliance. Fortunately, most countries were rather forgiving under the emergency conditions, but many companies likely paid unnecessarily large sums in municipal taxes for employees working at home outside city tax jurisdiction.

Thrust into an unexpected situation, it’s understandable that companies were unprepared for remote work implications in 2019 and 2020. But as we move into 2022, it’s clear there’s no turning back. A global talent mobility strategy is becoming an essential business function, for several key reasons.

Employees are demanding it. As companies grapple with the Great Resignation, we need every option on the table to help retain talent. Over 90% of employees think they should be able to work from anywhere, as long as their work gets done, and the flexibility to work in any location is a bigger factor than ever in a great employee experience. That means a robust mobility program could be the deciding factor in whether someone stays or goes. In fact, many say they’ll quit if their employer forces them back to the office.

Mobility offers a hiring advantage. The ability to work remotely is now the second most important factor employees look for in a new employer, and with over 80% of company leaders planning to allow remote work, prospects don’t have to settle for being stuck in an office. They’ll simply go elsewhere. Not to mention, embracing remote work allows organizations to recruit from a larger talent pool with zero regard for geography.

Mobility supports workplace diversity. A more diverse workplace culture is a top priority for both employees and employers. In fact, 3 out of 4 employees say a diverse workforce is a top factor in their job search, and 94% of HR pros say remote work has helped them create more diverse teams. In fact, remote work has been especially beneficial for traditionally underrepresented groups, including women, Black and LBGTQ employees and individuals with disabilities.

Mobility enables international experiences. Whether it’s a renewed sense of wanderlust in the wake of pandemic lockdowns—or perhaps to escape them—employees increasingly seek international experiences. In fact, one in four now say they want to work abroad, even for a long-term assignment, up significantly from just 17% last year. Implementing a global talent mobility strategy allows companies to offer this opportunity, which again, aids in both retention and recruiting.

While the benefits of a strong mobility program are clear, making it work will require companies to take a much more calculated, structured and strategic approach. In other words, we simply can’t rely on employees to self-report their location, nor on ad hoc systems (especially spreadsheets) to manage it all at scale. Instead, companies must deploy modern, global talent mobility technology that offers five key capabilities.

1) Simple mobility management workflows. The time for flying by the seat of your pants is over. If you haven’t already, it’s now essential to establish clear mobility policies around who’s eligible, parameters on timeframe or locations, and a process for requesting and approving remote work or business travel. Next, you’ll want to build these policies and parameters into a simple digital workflow that enables seamless management at the speed and scale you need without hassle and confusion.

2) Automated location tracking. Simply put, you must know where your employees are working from for tax, immigration and business licensing compliance, as well as their safety and well-being. For example, if another public health crisis or a geopolitical emergency happens, will you know who’s affected and how to keep them safe? The risks of not knowing are simply too great: over the past year, 2 out of 3 employees failed to report all their days working outside their home state/country to HR, and 1 in 5 reported none, despite being aware of the tax implications. That means automated location tracking is essential for reliable, real-time data. And fortunately, the overwhelming majority of employees are comfortable  with being tracked down to the city level.

3) User friendliness. It’s not just the HR team who doesn’t have time for cumbersome, complicated processes—employees are frustrated by them, too. In fact, 1 in 3 say they’d rather have dental work, do the dishes or sit in traffic than complete HR tasks, and 44% say technology makes their job harder, not easier. In today’s modern environment, offering your employees a simple, user-friendly solution for managing mobility assignments is essential for providing a better overall employee experience, which plays a huge role in employee retention.

4) Promoting remote opportunities. Actively promoting your remote work opportunities can help make global talent mobility a powerful recruiting and retention tool. In addition to communicating opportunities directly to employees and making them part of job descriptions, consider offering resources on potential remote work locations that can help employees become familiar with the local culture, housing options and more. This not only helps them to feel better prepared and ease the transition, but it can also be an incentive to explore growth opportunities through international experiences to feed the management pipeline.

5) Robust, flexible reporting. Of course, audit-ready reporting is essential for tax and immigration compliance, so deploying a solution that offers on-demand, real time, granular detail can mitigate compliance risk. But you should also consider a solution that helps you forecast mobility costs and implications to help leadership make better informed decisions.

“What if” scenario planning gives you the opportunity to run the numbers before the move to ensure ROI on business travel, remote work and employee placements.

With the scope of global talent mobility broadening to include a much larger segment of the employee population and more out-of-office arrangements, companies must have a strategy in place to support the new world of work. With employees eager to jump ship for a better opportunity, having the right policies and technology in place can help organizations turn global talent mobility from a calculated risk into a powerful competitive advantage.