Dust off your "gemba" for a leaner and meaner global mobility program!

In a post a few years ago, we discussed the idea of leveraging "gemba" with your global mobility program. In How to "go to gemba" in your mobility program, we described the Japanese term as "going to the actual place", to where value is created. "Like the design thinking practice, going to the source of the work and getting insight is critical to designing quality solutions. The term "going to gemba" ("genchi gembutsu") describes the value of going to "ground zero" and truly observing. A "Gemba Walk" is the action of diving into experiencing the work in action. This is where you "go see, ask why and show respect." 

According to this Management Today article, (Why it’s time to add a “gemba day” to your working policy), we might want to think about making "gemba" a bigger element of our work week and make it a one-day-per-week activity as opposed to the occasional or periodic focus. Why? Because its an opportunity to stand back from the day-to-day tasks to "walk the floor" of your workplace to identify wasteful activities. It helps to bring fresh eyes to processes that are the gears of your current program and find greater efficiencies. Gemba has us reconsider, pushes us to ask "why" and "what if", and challenge the status quo.

This year, just a few months ago, corporate mobility leaders that took our trends survey shared that their number one focus for 2023 was to streamline and find greater efficiencies. And (so far) this remains true as we continue to dig further into their initiatives and areas of focus in our current, 2023 Efficiencies in Global Mobility Survey. From the data gathered so far, 86% of mobility programs feel like they have plenty of opportunity to make improvements and create greater efficiencies within their programs and with their stakeholders and partners.

Besides participating in our survey to get specific insights on how companies are navigating their efficiency seeking initiatives, another suggestion is to learn more about gemba and consider how to incorporate it into your program improvement process. Thinking outside of the box and re-imagining could help future-proof your program, improve the employee experience and maybe even save costs. Program areas that are high on the list of where mobility programs see the most potential and are planning to focus are: "escalations and the overall escalation process", "internal training and development of team members", and the "expense process, invoicing and program payments".