How do the risks in a "super VUCA" world impact global mobility programs?

You may not need benchmark reports to prove to yourself and to your internal stakeholders that the world is a riskier place to traverse, but those reports are out there. Way back in May 2022, we posted a piece on “Minimizing risk in a super VUCA world”. We discussed that mobility teams and their partners work hard to protect the company and the employees that are served from the risk that is inherent in international business travel. The global mobility function seeks to minimize those risks both from a compliance perspective (think tax, right to work, immigration) and from a physical safety perspective in this world of super-VUCA. (VUCA = Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) 

According to the BlackRock Investment Institute's latest “Geopolitical risk dashboard”:

A series of cascading crises is bringing significant uncertainty, volatility, and fragility to geopolitics and markets. War in the Middle East, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and U.S.-China tensions have accelerated geopolitical fragmentation.

In their report, they lay out the Top 10 risks and share the degree of likelihood for each. 

Next, the AXA published the tenth edition of its Future Risks Report. Carried out among 3,500 experts in 50 countries and a representative sample of 20,000 members of the general population in 15 countries, this study measures and ranks their perception of evolving and rising risks. Since 2020, this report has been produced in partnership with the IPSOS polling institute. The year the report shares a term you would expect to hear in a “super VUCA” world: polycrisis. Geopolitical tensions, the exponential emergence of new technologies (such as generative AI), or the acceleration of global warming, no longer follow one another but are happening at the same time.

Finally, when it comes to wellbeing, safety, law, and order, Gallup knows a few things! To find out where people have the most positive — and negative — perceptions of their own security and trust in the rule of law, see how more than 140 countries scored on Gallup's Law and Order Index by downloading the 2023 Global Law and Order report. While confidence in the police rose a few points to 72%, the people of the world overall do not feel safer. The overall world scored 83 out of a possible 100 - the same as last year. The top 10 scores on the index, indicating people feeling the safest, were:

1. Tajikistan (96)
2. Finland (92)
3. Iceland (92)
4. Kuwait (92)
5. Luxembourg (92)
6. Norway (92) 
7. Vietnam (92)
8. Switzerland (91)
9. Denmark (90)
10. Indonesia (90)

The lowest scores:

1. Liberia (49)
2. The Gambia (56)
3. Sierra Leone (57)
4. The Republic of the Congo (58)
5. South Africa (59) 

The U.S. and Canada continue to head in the wrong direction and here is a look at things by region: