How can reimagined mobility help organizations see reward and not risk?

The EY 2023 Mobility Reimagined Survey shows workforce mobility’s reality doesn’t always reach potential, with risks in the race for talent.

With economic headwinds crashing into an unpredictable labor market, organizations are facing a talent paradox: balancing an imperative to invest in securing their global talent pipeline and capabilities, while also remaining agile enough to adapt through uncertainty. New ways of working — across borders and jurisdictions — have brought greater expectations for workforce flexibility, talent strategy, and technological investment, amid increasingly complex economic, geopolitical and social challenges.

To build sustainable value in this climate, leaders need solutions that mitigate risk and maximize reward; enhancing employee experience regardless of assignment location, orchestrating seamless cross-functional performance to grow cross-border business.

The EY 2023 Mobility Reimagined Survey reveals workforce mobility programs as having powerful strategic and operational importance in the global race for talent. The survey provides insights from more than 1,000 global mobility professionals and employees recently posted on international assignments, across six key sectors. Respondents express recognition of the influence of mobility programs to promote personal and career growth for employees, as well as value growth for organizations. But the findings also reveal employers facing a mismatch between talent demand and what organizations currently offer in their mobility programs. This tension is seen through a lens of capacity — the quantity of people who are allowed to gain the experience — and in the limits of traditional mobility models, which aren’t often built for the flexible and hybrid working arrangements that employees demand.

The present reality of workforce mobility doesn’t always live up to its potential, and can be reimagined.

The survey shows:

• 93% of employees agree an international assignment can be life-changing for themselves and their families.
• 92% of respondents believe that aligning mobility strategy to organizational objectives helps in attracting and retaining top talent, but most respondents don’t strongly agree their organizations are equipped to handle risks.
• 90% of employers believe aligning their mobility strategy to organizational goals drives business growth.
• 78% of employers see a positive return on investment from their mobility program, but perspectives differ across sectors.

At a time when global competition for talent is fierce and burnout is high, there is an opportunity for organizations to transform their mobility programs into strategic levers that build value for employees and the business. Policy segmentation, digitizing operations and flexible hybrid policies can help to create a new balance between talent and business needs in today’s world.

Thriving in an uncertain global talent landscape

The looming possibility of sustained sluggish economic growth has forced organizations to prioritize agility in the face of structural and cyclical challenges. Global GDP growth is expected to be just 2.2% in 2023, according to the OECD, with geopolitical uncertainty and high inflation compounding the challenges of a continually unpredictable labor market. The EY 2022 Work Reimagined study showed that in many sectors employees gained further leverage with employers during the COVID-19 pandemic, when organizations needed to hold on to core talent and capabilities. 

The labor outlook is clouded by the persistent geographic and demographic imbalance to the global labor supply. While certain geographies or sectors may see a slowdown, the rise of geopolitical challenges will also begin to increase the demand for mobility to solve for country-specific issues.  

The EY 2022 Work Reimagined Survey revealed the priorities of employees have shifted in recent years to emphasize flexible work, broader total rewards offerings and better alignment with their own values and career objectives. Organizations have required adaptation. Leaders have needed to build high-value touchpoints with dispersed teams, seeking meaningful ways to inspire and motivate employees. As organizations have emerged from recent periods of lockdowns and reduced international travel, the data shows international experiences hold outsized influence.

A vast majority of employees, 93%, consider international assignments as potentially life-changing experiences, and pivotal to their career growth. Furthermore, life-changing experiences are cited as the number one benefit of international experiences.

Understanding cross-border work as life-changing provides both an opportunity and a challenge for organizations seeking to preserve their talent pipeline. On one hand, this shows the influence of international postings, and an opportunity to cultivate personal and professional growth for an employee.

But reimagining the mobility function with the physical and emotional concerns of people at the center amounts to an organizational transformation of processes, technology and structure. The success of such an undertaking is greatly connected to being aware of the enterprise risks and emotional journeys of employees, as research from EY and Oxford University has shown. Organizations need to be prepared to respond to and benefit from the growth of their employees. This means seeing mobility as a vital part of overall talent strategy, and not as a transactional function locked in a silo.

Workforce mobility’s influence across functions

The data shows a certain tension around the strategic and operational identity of mobility programs, perhaps due to its position and influence. The largest number (42%) of respondents indicate mobility as being fully centralized, often reporting to HR. But mobility practitioners must collaborate with a broad set of stakeholders to accomplish basic tasks, from technology enablement to immigration compliance.

Recognition of the full strategic potential of workforce mobility is highly connected to the level of seniority of mobility professionals. Substantially more senior Mobility professionals see their function as influencing business strategy and operations, and believe a lack of visibility from other functions makes it difficult to leverage the potential of mobility to achieve broader firm objectives. This disconnect in strategic or operational value of mobility is an opportunity for organizations to better articulate priorities around talent and attraction, career and skills development, as it relates to cross-border work. For example, mobility can be transformed into a function covering a broad constellation of cross-border work arrangements aligned with overall workforce strategy and business need. These include short- and long-term assignments, hybrid and virtual working arrangements, business travel and relocation.

Just as there is a split in perception about mobility depending on employee seniority, respondents showed clear divisions based on sector, perhaps due to the kind of talent considerations each industry addressed through mobility programs. Organizations utilizing mobility programs primarily for employees crucial to operations, will likely see the function as more heavily weighted toward an operational focus.

The data also reveals characteristics of employers seeing return on investment from their mobility function, and those who are less likely to register a return on investment. Employers who were more strategically integrated with overall talent strategy were more likely to indicate positive returns from mobility programs.

Integrated Talent Employers

These employers consider mobility as an approach to address global talent shortages, and agree they are winning the race for talent as a result. They’ve developed a policy for hybrid mobility — defined as temporary and permanent remote work, hybrid cross-border work, virtual assignments and “digital nomads.” Most of these employers cite at least some return on investment for mobility programs and plan substantial technology investments in the next five years. These organizations are poised to fully recognize the value of segmentation, enabled by technology, as a way to deliver cross-border experiences that align to the demands of the different employee types. They are also more likely to have mobility report to HR, with an eye to expand their responsibilities in the next three years.

Siloed Mobility Employers

This smaller set of employers indicated no or minimal consideration of mobility as part of global talent strategy, and have no “hybrid mobility” policies in place. Less than half of this group sees return on investment for their mobility program, and plans to invest in technology improvements in the next five years. Almost none of these employers report to HR and have narrower responsibilities.

Digitization of mobility processes and execution, and the willingness to invest in further digitization, are points of diversion between the two groups of employers, highlighting the need to leverage technology enablement to support the strategic diversification and value creation needed to excel.

Digitizing mobile workforce management efficiently

The dramatic shifts to new ways of working in recent years have only brought greater attention to longstanding risks and opportunities of flexible and hybrid working. Employees and employers need technology that doesn’t create friction in their workflow or wellbeing. Tools should ease mobile workforce management duties, including the ability to quickly complete common repetitive tasks, while also simplifying tax, legal, relocation and immigration processes associated with cross-border work. Further, emerging technologies transform the experience for the cross-border employee, keeping them informed but not overwhelmed, risk savvy, and unencumbered. This freedom from the traditional burdens of the mobility experience allows them to increase productivity and engagement earlier in their journey.

Most mobility professionals (92%) think digitizing processes is beneficial, but only 35% say their organization has done so for key mobility processes. This disconnect presents an area of focus, with a vast majority of respondents expecting stable or increased investment over the next five years.

Some of that investment may come in terms of consolidating or upgrading systems to accomplish key tasks. Both employees and mobility professionals cite the need to manage multiple systems for mobile assignments with 79% of employees saying they are or have used two or more mobility solutions for an international relocation. A further 87% of mobility professionals say they use two or more mobility systems or platforms in their organization, with larger organizations often using more systems.

Organizations that regularly operate across borders often need multiple vendors to provide services in particular jurisdictions. The Payroll function is a good example of this: previous EY research showed that firms operating in 30 or more countries needed an average of nine payroll providers. This is just the start of the complexity, as HRIS (Human Resources Information Systems), experience technologies and mobility vendor technology are all critical to functional execution. Integration of all of these systems is crucial, and leading organizations have moved beyond mere linkages to introduction of a “single pane of glass” through which all employee data can be accessed. Technology acts as a touchpoint for employees for critical and mundane tasks, and any amount of friction between the user and a successful digital interaction influences overall employee experience.

This highlights the consistent need for harmony between user experience and a seamless integration of mobility technology across functions, especially across borders. This seamless experience should exist across collaborative working tools, HR systems, Payroll, and any relocation, immigration or tax systems.

With this, organizations managing so many critical systems to enable cross-border work must have full visibility over legal, tax or regulatory compliance obligations as well as the data needed to enable strategic planning. It then becomes essential for organizations and employees to be risk aware.

Organizations need to know where their employees are to begin to address potential physical safety or cybersecurity issues which may develop, but also to know the extent of tax, immigration, or regulatory risk exposure. Most (76%) of mobility professionals said their organization had some kind of policy or approach to hybrid mobility, defined as temporary and permanent remote work, hybrid cross-border work, virtual assignments and “digital nomads.” But only 47% of respondents said those hybrid policies were globally consistent, with even fewer (41%) saying their hybrid policy addresses key issues.

The data also shows an apparent disconnect between mobility professionals and employees in recognition of risk, both to the organization and to individuals. While both groups generally recognize geopolitical risks on a comparable level, the data shows diverging risk recognition when it comes to tax risk exposure, and even career development.

The perception gap over mobility’s effect on career development is a potential area of focus for leaders wanting to retain talent in this competitive labor market. A similar gap was seen in the EY 2022 Work Reimagined Survey, where 72% of employers believed new ways of working would cause some members of the workforce to lose a competitive advantage. Just 56% of employees believed the same. Employers have an opportunity to clearly articulate career development and progression opportunities with mobile employees, engaging them to co-create the flexible future of the organization, built on a foundation of shared values and critical skills.

Five areas of focus to reimagine workforce mobility

As economic and labor market uncertainty continues to drive organizations to reshape themselves, leaders should consider their mobility programs as a cross-functional lever to upskill and reskill, engage, and retain their employees, while creating long-term value. Here are five areas to focus on to fully reimagine mobility:

Amid economic headwinds and a still heated race for talent, the transformation of mobility programs can fuel a more sustainable future for organizations. This means reimagining mobility as a strategy influencer across functions; part of a talent strategy rooted in attracting, retaining and growing the skills needed for the future shape of an organization. The first movers to break mobility out of an operational silo will have a greater chance of success in creating life-changing experiences for their employees, excelling in the cross-border race for talent, and growing their business.