Is global work losing its attractiveness?
Global Mobility is in crisis as companies use more virtual work. Convincing staff to accept an assignment abroad has never been harder. Is there a solution? Giovanna Silveira Milani and Michael Dickmann explain.
T 34
he Covid-19 pandemic is an extraordinary event that has severe economic and societal implications
we are just starting to uncover. In a little over a year, uncertainty led to job insecurities and massive loss of income worldwide, increasing general anxiety. Companies were requested to take unprecedented measures to keep business afloat. Shut-down measures and different national restrictions called
for
the rapid adoption of digital technologies and employees were constrained to recreate their offices at home. International travel virtually disappeared. With little professional stimulus, the pandemic triggered a deliberate evaluation of one’s career and global work, it seems, lost some of its attractiveness. Identifying emerging issues
of the expatriate work, while assessing implications for policies at national and international levels is the objective of GLOMO (
www.glomo.eu), a pioneer project funded by EU. Through cross- level research we have generated knowledge about the success factors, effects, and implications of the mobility phenomenon. When individuals encounter
periods of stress and anxiety, predictability brings comfort and there is a tendency to look for the familiar, be it in people or places. The effects of the pandemic led to the collapse of available opportunities, high cost of living and remote work which pushed many employees to go back to their home countries, creating a reverse migration movement in Europe. Firms saw their global talent plans
disrupted. Work-life inconsistencies made staff less willing to move abroad. The re-evaluation of career aspirations will have a strong impact on business continuity planning. Global mobility is in crisis.
MID-CAREER, FAMILY AND DISRUPTION Organizations make use of global work for leadership development, subsidiary control, knowledge transfer or when there is a shortage of skills in the host country. Often global talent is in their mid-careers when they leave for organizational assignments, precisely when they are more likely to have higher work- family conflict and financial debt. As we grow older, we are also less willing to compromise, especially with regards to children and family. The GLOMO research has
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