Only 3%? What does it take to be a world-class mobility program?

Unquestionably, today's workforce is changing. The 2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends points out that, "It’s more digital, more global, diverse, automation-savvy, and social media proficient. At the same time, business expectations, needs, and demands are evolving faster than ever before. While some view this as a challenge, we see it as an opportunity."

We might ask, isn't every challenge really an opportunity? But to take advantage of this opportunity, companies must be able to move with speed, agility and adaptability. The dynamic "organization of the future" is coming fast, and companies must be able to keep up, or even better, lead. One recommendation by Deloitte was to make talent mobility a core value within the company of the future. They believe that companies should consider requiring executive leaders to move from function to function, and even have that initiative trickle down to all employee levels throughout the organization so that internal mobility gets better leveraged. By doing so, employees are engaged and experiencing the new more agile career model where people stay in positions for less time. This also provides the company the benefit of "plug and play" talent that can move with speed as the business needs. These internal assignments would support rapid skill development and keep talent properly tooled to be effective. This focus on leveraging assignment experiences would create a more capable talent body that is ready to lead from first-hand insights and experiences. 

This all implies that the "organization of the future" will be one with a very healthy and robust global mobility program.  If so, companies that believe this and get behind this talent strategy, must be ready to maintain efficient and effective mobility programs and make them more agile and flexible. A new (or enhanced) definition of "world-class" mobility program is evolving.

And yet, only 3% of the respondents rated their companies as “world class” in global deployments! In this case, the math is really easy. If only 3% of the respondents rated their companies as “world class” in global deployments, then 97% are below world class and should be really considering what they are currently doing and who they are currently doing it with.

What makes global mobility so challenging is the focus of this article, Meeting the Challenges of Global Mobility, by Jonathan Pearce. One of those big challenges is that, "Far too often, the global mobility challenge for employees is exacerbated by a lack of support from employers." Add to that disjointed experts and stakeholders from multiple sources (internal corporate team members from hiring managers, HR, payroll, comp & benefits, immigration, global mobility, recruitment along with those from the global supply chain like relocation management companies, tax and immigration partners, and destination services) trying to communicate and stay on top of a complex, risk-laden, expensive and disruptive process and you see why this is so challenging.

We saw these challenges a while back too, as have many in our industry. While having well trained and talented people helping within the process is (and always has been) critical, quality technology tools have become the advantage to providing a higher level of support, better communication and reporting, and a more seamless overall experience that works to provide all stakeholders what they need to get out of the 97% that feel below world class status. Enter our Elo platforms.

Do you currently have a definition for a world-class mobility program? What do you see as the most important element(s) that must be addressed for moving your mobility program into world-class status? What exactly does your program need in order to reach world-class status?