TRENDS


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ublished by BDO and Santa Fe Relocation Services, two recent pieces of research, Bridging the Gap: Survey on the Future of Global Mobility and Embedding Global Mobility at


the Heart of Business Strategy, suggest a gulf between the day-to- day role of global mobility professionals and how business leaders would like this function to operate. While global mobility staff are considered effective in their


present roles and demonstrate added value through their current focus on assignee management, assignment administration, maintaining compliance, and managing costs, top leaders believe that the function needs to change if it is to continue to demonstrate value. It must become more aligned to commercial objectives. Senior leaders seek an evolution in global mobility’s role,


moving away from operational work to a greater emphasis on strategic thinking. Specifically, the desired future focus of the profession is linked to activities such as business succession planning, strategic workforce planning, talent development, and ensuring return on investment from international assignments. An emphasis on growing high-potential employees and future


business leaders through the nurturing of talent is envisaged as a key role for global mobility professionals going forward. Of course, the need for evolution extends to the wider


organisation if these objectives are to be achieved. Nonetheless, global mobility teams have a role to play and should move away from being primarily transactional to becoming a more strategic, business-critical function. This will be especially important given top management’s increasing emphasis on the value of an internationally mobile workforce in securing future organisational success.


Functional evolution – or back to the future? While business leaders see a strategic role for global mobility, those in the function today typically lament that they are not involved with leadership decisions relating to relocation: strategic HR decisions are made, and global mobility professionals implement them. Thus, there appears to be a significant disconnect between


the reality of the job role, the expectations of senior executives, and what global mobility professionals would like to do. This can be explained in part by the evolution of global mobility as a profession in its own right as it has branched away from mainstream HR activity. In the 1980s and 1990s, HR professionals were responsible for


domestic and international relocation. As international relocation specialists became an organisational necessity by the turn of the century, a close relationship developed between international assignment managers involved in relocation policy design and review and their mainstream HR colleagues, who dealt with a wide spectrum of HR activities taking place organisationally. Specific input from international assignment personnel ensured that relocation policy and its implementation dovetailed with HR policy. In the second decade of the 21st century, the division between HR


professionals’ job roles and those of global mobility professionals continues to widen. In recent years, there appears to have been a significant shift towards greater administrative specialisation being undertaken by global mobility professionals in response to growing employer concern with tracking mobile personnel to ensure compliance (tax, social security and immigration). ➲


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