How immigration is shaping workforce transformation

This line from the Beatles’ 1967 song “A Day in the Life” conveys just the right mix of ennui and resignation that captures the current mood of boardrooms the world over.

These are confusing, if not frightening, times. Have we avoided a recession, or is one looming? Will war be a regrettable, if tragic, regional concern? Or are we on the verge of global conflict? Do rapid advances in technology spell the emergence of a new path to prosperity? Or do they signal broad redundancies and a hollowing of the workforce? Post-pandemic, have we turned a corner to a reinvigorated globalization? Or will populist forces be ascendant and lead to insular economies?

Oh boy, indeed. Decision-makers glance at the horizon, seeking to interpret the semaphore of these and other flags, and conclude they need help.

There is a proliferation of specialized consulting services offered in response to this dual sense of panic and opportunity. Perhaps no advisory segment is more important than one concerning the how, when, and where to staff your business. All businesses seek to maximize return and gain competitive advantage; central to that is the engagement and deployment of their personnel.

In such a moment, there is tremendous opportunity for business immigration professionals. Practitioners have long hungered to move up the client’s decision tree, to go beyond simply executing compliance. Thoughtful mobility specialists seek to advise and shape the decision-making itself.

Immigration is not merely navigating a complicated process. It’s a driver, an enabler, an instrument that meaningfully supports clients in achieving strategic results. In consequence, we should embrace the opportunity to contribute to the clients’ advisory needs in this environment. This can be achieved by expanding the emerging discipline of workforce transformation consulting.

Risk and resilience

The current outlook feels like a period of transition, moving away from a pattern of anticipated growth and cross-border expansion to one that’s less settled. In a recent essay published by The Economist, Callum Williams argued that a new consensus is emerging. In a deliberate shift away from an internationalization of free-flowing capital, the emerging trend is best described as a search for resilience. The goal is to “reduce risks to a country’s economy — those presented by the vagaries of markets, from an unpredictable shock such as a pandemic, or the actions of a geopolitical opponent.”1

In consequence, economies are turning inward, developing industrial policies that champion local supply, or provide deliberate source redundancies. National self-reliance is prioritized over cross-border cooperation. Trade blocks, built on exclusion and suspicion, are being renegotiated.

Why? The collective thinking is supply chains buckled during the pandemic, resulting in a questioning of the globalization model. “A system that had once seemed to deliver efficiency and convenience had turned into a source of instability”, notes Williams.2 Compounding the distrust, China and the United States are increasingly fractious, characterized by sanctions and distrust. The biggest war in Europe since Word War II is raging. The Middle East continues to be a region full of tension and seemingly irrepressible turmoil. “Gone”, concludes Williams, “is the notion that economic integration would lead to political integration.”3

There is also a sense of vulnerability in gaining access to critical resources. We have witnessed the deliberate choice to weaponize hydrocarbon and “rare earth” supplies. Such efforts led to the realization that “less Western-aligned” countries could similarly seek to limit access to other “strategic” resources, such as those used in batteries or computer chips. What was once obvious grounds for import-export exchange has become, through this new lens, a naïve exposure to a chokehold.

Finally, the broad emergence of generative AI was as unsettling as it was exciting. What many view as a route to new prosperity and productivity is considered by others to be a fundamental threat to workers, if not humanity itself. While many embrace AI’s potential, for others it represents a loss of control.

These sentiments all add up to an environment where business leaders are less ambitious, more tempered, and much more fearful than they were during the recent period of globalization. There is a defensive undercurrent in this mood, a consequence as much of uncertainty as mistrust. Consultants must respond to this clouded outlook, including those seeking to offer insight in human resource needs and effectiveness.

Defining workforce transformation

EY’s Organization and Workforce Transformation services describe workforce transformation as an approach that helps clients design and implement new, efficient organization designs and workforce strategies to realize transformation and business strategies. The approach leverages proprietary data and AI-driven analytics platforms to accelerate implementation and deliver value.

Workforce transformation gives employers the tools to secure and employ information to make best use of their people and their potential? This requires an enhanced understanding of the appropriate use of technologies and enhanced engagement, how teams are constructed and managed, how results are measured, and how best to anticipate ongoing change.

Understanding the capabilities of innovations such as AI is an important aspect of this analysis, but so too is an awareness of a company’s objectives and culture. Workforce transformation helps business leaders better understand workforce demand and supply, the capabilities and structures needed, and the acquisition, upskilling and reskilling to fill roles.

In more emotional terms, the discipline is committed to helping restore business leaders’ confidence in their hiring and utilization strategies. Human resource planning is both a by-product of and an enabler for overall corporate strategy. The field has traditionally been challenged to articulate and measure the return-on-investment calculations expected by senior management. When a business is searching for optimal direction, it's likely their hiring and staff development initiatives are tentative, unmoored and less sure.

For immigration professionals, how can the rigour of workforce transformation better inform and shape businesses’ deployment decisions? We can’t know all the uncertainties in seeking to address this question. But it may be instructive to review the shape and future of global supply chains and how a business and its people strategy could best respond to present and future challenges.

Implications for business immigration

The perceived wisdom these days is to “de-risk” supply, safeguarding strategic sources from wholly domestic sources or close allies. Call it “friend-shoring” or “near-shoring.” The idea is to backstop and prioritize certainty over ambiguity. Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, summarized the anxiety in late 2022, stating “as global supply chains became leaner…they also became extremely vulnerable to disruptions [and] global shocks.”

Before the pandemic, global supply chains focused relentlessly, and successfully, on efficiency over resilience. Just-in-time deliveries and a conscious mania to minimize inventory had indeed gone to unsustainable extremes. Excess capacity is usually anathema to business, but it’s now incorporated into current planning. One indicator of this shift is the significant growth of company inventories, currently stockpiled at more than twice pre-pandemic rates, purely as an insurance policy in case supply chains fail.

This shift in collective mindset from “just in time” to “just in case” offers opportunities for applying workforce transformation disciplines to immigration planning. If a business is identifying new trading partners, what is the impact on its talent search? How best can a business deploy those skilled in using digital tools, in expanding connectivity, in streamlining perceived chokeholds, among other enhancements? Workforce transformation can help structure the protocols for selecting candidates and evaluating their success.

Immigration advisers can amplify these efforts. They can build into the workforce transformation process criteria that satisfy the requirements for securing work authorizations as rapidly as possible. Are academic qualifications and work experience appropriately evaluated? Is the nationality of candidates being considered, such that free-trade and expedited movement treaties between home and host countries are fully leveraged? Is the term for which authorization is sought available? Are status extensions possible? Can we secure status for an accompanying spouse or dependent children?

Immigration and mobility specialists can also outline options for the nature of the international assignment itself. Global supply chains are not only about things, but also about talent movement. As companies become leaner and more efficient, to what degree will they require global talent to overcome gaps or resolve challenges? With workforce transformation, immigration partitioners can formulate optimal assignment structures that are shorter, focused, and flexible.

Further, if the business’s aim is to expand their domestic production, workforce transformation and immigration professionals can work together. Workforce transformation can help establish the company’s business objectives, while immigration teams can outline the process by which foreign talent can enter and support homeland efforts.

What government programs and regulations exist to secure the entry of foreign nationals? Can reciprocity exchange agreements be implemented to facilitate skills or knowledge transfer? How effectively can promising foreign students secure the authorization to work for the domestic operations, and then benefit from permanent status in the host country?

Planning in these contexts would be most successful if there is cooperation between the two disciplines, supported by a foundation of transparent and ongoing communication. Consulting rigour — sometimes tempered, sometimes expanded by legal mobility knowledge — can most effectively help the business. So equipped, the business can look around corners with the talent and planning options available to manage the challenges of the moment, and of moments to come.

Next steps for HR and mobility professionals:

1. Communicate with workforce transformation team members to better understand the scope of their offering and approaches.
2. Set up a meeting with your immigration and mobility client to introduce them to the workforce transformation team and establish a forum to review the relevance and impact of their offering.
3. Establish a workforce transformation and immigration and mobility working group to explore how these disciplines can magnify impact in your client’s talent selection and deployment strategies to best meet their business and strategic objectives.