HR STRATEGY
“At the moment, there is a lot of uncertainty because we
don’t know what the terms of Brexit will be. For now, we’ve spent some time trying to explain to our inbound assignees, and indeed our local hires who are not UK or EU nationals, that they are unlikely to be impacted at this juncture. “We are also trying to reassure EU nationals that the UK
has not yet left the EU. Even when the government invokes Article 50, we will not be leaving the EU the next day; there is a two-year discussion and negotiation period. “Until we know what comes out of that, there’s no point trying to second-guess what may happen.”
“Brexit is as much about the ripples as it is about the centre point where the stone dropped”
Impact on talent planning This uncertainty is likely to push talent and succession planning, and mobility as part of that, higher up the corporate agenda. For HR and talent management teams, it will be interesting to see how individuals will respond to uncertainty, and how organisations’ people strategies, in particular around training and career trajectories, will need to change in response to that. “There are a lot of EU nationals who have been working
in this country for five years. I’m no immigration expert, but there are opportunities in these cases to apply for permanent residency – if the individual wants to, of course. They can also go for UK citizenship,” said Susan Gregory on this question. “There’ll be another swathe of people who want to come
to the UK, and another group who haven’t been in the UK for that long. They will need to think about what they’re going to do and how they’re going to do it.” For now, Grant Thornton is very much following a business-
as-usual approach, because no one knows what the terms of the UK’s exit will be. “We can guess, but there’s nothing against which we can validate any assumptions at the moment,” added Susan Gregory. “You could argue that there’s a limited impact, but you
could also argue that there is more impact from exchange-rate f luctuations, which hit everyone, regardless of whether they are an EU national or not. So it’s as much about the ripples as it is about the centre point where the stone dropped.”
Managing the wider implications “I think that, until we start having conversations with other countries, the debate may be quite polarised between those who wanted to remain saying ‘the sky is falling in’ and the people who wanted to leave saying ‘it’s a brave new world and it’s going to be great’,” continued Susan Gregory. “The likelihood is that the truth will be somewhere in
between. So it’s about trying to be ready so we aren’t caught napping.” Already, there are anxieties in the medium and longer term
over how the UK’s administrative infrastructure will cope with changes to work visas once the terms are negotiated, particularly around visas and immigration, a key plank of the Leave campaign.
“My concern is how HM Immigration is going to cope with
the need potentially to issue visas for EU nationals working in the UK,” said Susan. “For people on Tier 2 visas, it’s business as usual. But for everyone else, we don’t know. The Home Office is going to need a lot more people to manage.” Relocate put these queries to the Home Office, which replied,
“UK Visas and Immigration staff are deployed according to demands on the service. Currently, all EEA [European Economic Area] applications are being considered within the published service standards.” It seems that at the Home Office, too, the business-as-usual
approach is prevailing. However, the latest batch of citizenship and visa applications statistics (covering the April-June quarter), which revealed that net migration was still three times the government’s target, may shape the discussions around the terms of the exit and future UK immigration policy. For now, there may be more questions than answers, but what
is certain is that, for mobility and HR, there are opportunities to be a voice in this critical debate – one in which politicians are preparing to hammer out the terms of the UK’s exit from the EU, and the country’s economic future.
Cutting through complexity Though the complications of Brexit are adding a new perspective to the approach that won Susan Gregory and her team the Relocate HR Team of the Year award, increasing complexity has been a characteristic of mobility for the past few years. “We aim to move people as simply as possible – and we care.
We interact closely with the business to deliver talent needs and thought leadership,” said Susan.
“For mobility and HR, there are opportunities to be a voice in the critical Brexit debate” From the business’s perspective, they have achieved their
aims. Grant Thornton’s CEO, Sacha Romanovitch, praising the team for its Relocate Awards success, made the link between HR and mobility as business partners to support the wider company. “The way I like to look at mobility is as a three-legged
stool,” Susan Gregory told me. “Assignments, transfers and exchanges have to work for everyone. Losing our best people is not an option, so we do what we can for them. “I cannot overstate the importance of the return phase. You
will get a bad reputation as an employer if you don’t manage that. “Equally, mobility has to work for the sending and host
countries. We are in the middle, working to meet all those needs.” Many HR global mobility managers will sympathise with that.
Global Mobility T OOLKIT
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12 | Re:locate | Autumn 2016
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