it will regain the status it once had remains to be seen, but it is still the gateway to mainland China and will always be a strategic location for companies.”
AGILE RESPONSES TO KEY REGIONAL CHALLENGES Sharon started her career in real estate and worked up to executive director at Halstead Property, one of New York’s biggest
agencies,
where she ran the global services division. She moved to Chicago with her family to join Relo Network Asia. “The company is the right size to have the agility to respond to the market,” she says. The
greatest challenges for
families relocating around Asia – housing and education – have not changed since the pandemic. In popular locations such as Singapore and Tokyo, a housing shortage
has combined with
significant rent hikes, but she is hopeful prices have peaked. “Rents are still expensive, but prices are levelling off,” she says. For the
Sharon believes the
industry as whole, digitisation
of visas and immigration is one of the biggest issues. “Companies need to track their employees’ visa requirements carefully,“ she says. “It is a challenge for large organisations to make sure they are compliant, but getting caught outside the rules in a country like Singapore can be very damning.” The trend to remote working also presents its issues. “Establishing a presence in a country might require specialist visas or taxes to be paid there.” Reducing costs is the other
current industry challenge. “Everyone's in cost-containment mode and there is a real pressure on talent mobility professionals to reduce costs.” One consequence is an increase support
in Asia has received. “Nothing is impossible,” says the one-day requests Relo Network
Sharon, “but it would be useful to have better definition about what needs to be achieved in that day so we can set everyone's expectations, including for our teams on the ground. Sometimes our destination consultants compensate for lower packages with their
own time
because they all really care about the assignees.”
COMMUNICATING & COMMUNITY BUILDING With more inter-Asia relocations, Sharon is also seeing an increased need for multilingual support. “There's nothing better than communication in your own language. We are moving more Chinese
nationals into other
locations and our team members need to speak Mandarin.” It’s a similar story with Japan. “A lot of Japanese companies will only deal with organisations offering a native speaker.” In the end, the most important
part of the job is communication, says Sharon, which is why she was passionate about the recent launch of the Asia Talent Mobility Alliance. She and Relo Network Asia’s CEO Steve Burson felt the talent mobility community in Asia needed a place to come together. “What works in Europe or North America is not always going to be the solution in Asia,” says Sharon. The alliance
is organised
around four environmental,
pillars: community; social and
governance; advocacy and education. “There are some great organisations around, but we felt it was critical to be a not-for-profit with the focus on the member community. We
organisation created knowledge, provide
a knowledge and
are a no-solicit to share
support and
drive growth while providing a virtual space to communicate.” So far, the alliance is building centre providing
information on everything from ESG to policy samples and industry reports
insights. It is also 65
introducing a mentoring system, which will have an emphasis on peer-to-peer connections. “I believe that as a responsible
community member, you share what you have,” says Sharon. “I wouldn't be here if I hadn’t had the opportunity to connect
with
others from organisations such as the Corporate Relocation Council and the
Worldwide
Relocation Council, whose members shared openly with me.”
“ I believe that as a responsible community member, you share what you have.”
Employee
THINK WOMEN
GLOBAL MOBILITY
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