9 ideas and concepts to understand current talent mobility issues

Olivier Meier
8 min readMar 29, 2024

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Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

1. Hybrid

Hybrid work setups: At a domestic level, hybrid working is often viewed as a pragmatic compromise between working full-time at home or in an office. Hybrid working could also be about combining an international assignment with a period of remote working. Some examples include a short period of remote working during a traditional long-term assignment or having a short-term assignment to build relationships with local peers, followed by remote work. This combination may gain popularity as compliance issues may limit the duration or feasibility of virtual assignments in many situations.

The concept of hybrid is also relevant for talent management issues: digitalization is prompting companies to look for new talent profiles, and more specifically for “hybrid profiles.” The characteristic of a hybrid profile is that it combines the skills and knowledge of different lines of business or functions. It could be business managers with advanced tech skills who can work closely with the IT department, finance and HR managers who can rely on analytics to provide strategic input, or HR team members who can use marketing techniques to boost employer branding.

Mobility has a role to play in helping develop these new forms of hybrid talent. High-profile employees will be required, through international developmental moves as well as lateral moves between functions, to upskill or reskill and match the hybrid requirements of the future of work.

2. Internal talent marketplace

Numerous inefficiencies can lead to an imperfect internal talent marketplace for mobile talent.

The existence of an informal recruitment short circuit can defeat official talent selection processes and increase diversity gaps. We should not underestimate the asymmetry of the information flow about internal jobs and opportunities: employers lack complete information about labor availability, quality, and employees lack full information about job availability and quality.

The impact of a flawed selection reverberates on many aspects of mobility. Relying on just a few candidates could lead to higher costs, a lack of diversity and even performance issues. Mobility teams do not control the entire recruitment process, but they can rely on a mix of push and pull approaches.

A “push” approach promotes existing mobility opportunities, amplifies the communication about international jobs initiated by local HR teams and target groups interested in a job abroad. The “pull” approaches would be about communicating success stories and promoting role models (essential to promote diversity and attach under-represented employee groups) as well as ensuring that mobility is integrated in the employee value proposition and overall employer branding.

Organizations with integrated mobility strategies usually rely on a “pull” approach and make mobility an important part of their employer branding. Organizations with reactive mobility may be reluctant to create excessive expectations and focus on more targeted “push” approaches for selected jobs/categories of employees.

3. Global talent brokering

Global talent brokering marks a return to the strategic objectives of mobility: addressing labor supply and demand imbalances, and dealing with urgent workforce challenges and skill shortages.

Talent brokering is about matching talent between business units and geographies. Matching talent can involve different forms of mobility: international moves (traditional expatriate assignments, rotators, and short-term assignments) but not always (locally hired foreigners, remote working). Mobility can be across functions (lateral moves) or within the same business unit (vertical moves) as well as external (e.g., gig workers, temporary talent exchanges between organizations, peer talent pools).

HR and mobility teams have an important role to play in the global talent brokering process. They remove the barriers to talent matching by assessing the feasibility of different types of mobility, ensuring compliance, containing costs, and improving employee experience. Instead of managing a relocation exercise in isolation from the broader business considerations, they are actively involved in the decision process designed to connect talent owners with business units having talent gaps or urgent needs.

4. Lateral moves

From a pure mobility perspective, lateral moves are about moving employees between subsidiaries rather than from the headquarters of the company to a subsidiary. It also means that moves between emerging markets are growing faster than moves from developed countries to emerging markets. The rise of lateral moves is a feature of the evolution of globalization and a sign that global mobility is become more mature as well as an indication of the ever greater participation from employees from emerging markets in the mobile workforce.

From a career management perspective, lateral moves are about moving between types of jobs as opposed to be promoted with the same job family (vertical moves). It is a precondition for talent retention as the number of senior manager positions available in a given company is limited and not all employees can make it to the top. Lateral career moves can be important for repatriated expatriates. Companies struggle to guarantee them a job upon repatriation and facilitating lateral moves instead of trying to implement straightforward promotions following an assignment could be part of the solution. Lateral moves are also a way to build up talent within the company by exposing high potential employees to the realities of different departments.

5. Employee-driven mobility

Employee-driven mobility is overtaking company-sponsored relocation.

While companies have been driving a large share of international assignments for many years, individuals are increasingly willing to market themselves globally or move for personal lifestyle reasons. Organizations used to facilitate self-requested moves only in selected cases and with limited budget, but the balance is tilting further in the favor of employees.

Low unemployment, the “Great Resignation” and the war for skilled talent are fueling a renewed focus on attraction and retention, and companies are more actively supporting these requests for retention purposes.

The whole discussion about “working from anywhere” is driven more by employees requesting international remote working rather than virtual assignments driven by companies.

6. Work from anywhere

This term is often used to frame international remote working (IRW) in a more appealing way, and it goes hand in hand with the idea of flexible working. The expression has been used by CEOs and top-level managers to demonstrate the willingness of their organizations to become more flexible, agile, and attuned to the expectations of their workers. It holds the promise of better employee experience and increased business resilience. The risk is that the promise may remain vague and difficult to implement in practice.

Employee-driven IRW is about allowing employees to work for a limited number of days abroad — a kind of lifestyle benefit. Employee-driven remote working can also entail being transferred abroad permanently. These moves are sometimes supported by companies for talent retention purposes, but employees typically receive limited relocation packages and no expat allowance. Some employees may desire the flexibility to go back and forth between different locations and not fully localize in a single new country, but, for compliance reasons, this may be too complex for companies to manage.

Employer-initiated IRW can be designed to address specific business issues: It can take the form of virtual assignments to complement a traditional expatriate assignment if an employee cannot relocate immediately or needs to repatriate early (as it was the case during the pandemic.) It can also be a real alternative to international assignments for employees who, for personal or objective reasons, cannot relocate abroad at all. It opens up new opportunities to get international exposure for some employees. For others, on the contrary, it could appear as a low-value alternative to a real expatriate experience.

7. Employee experience curator

Digitalization, increased talent mobility, and the rise of remote working are changing the employees’ experience. Ensuring smooth relocation or virtual international collaboration requires new approaches and tools. The objective is to have a more holistic approach to international assignments (i.e. including the entire family, the long-term career evolution and the wellbeing of the assignee) and provide employees with the tools they need to perform their job effectively while avoiding information overload.

The added value of talent mobility professionals and a part of the justification of their roles is about curating all related employee experience moments in the life cycle of an assignment, finding the right balance technology and human interaction, and strike a happy medium between self-service tools and paternalistic approaches.

The war for talent is forcing organizations to differentiate themselves to attract top performers globally. One element of this differentiation is the development of more personalized Employee Value Proposition (EVP) for both local and expatriate employees, reflecting their expectations not just in terms of compensation and benefits but also career, lifestyle, and higher purpose. The EVP is the sum of all the tangible and intangible benefits that people receive from the organization. A good EVP can reinforce all elements of talent management including attraction, retention, and compensation (an attractive lifestyle and a higher sense of purpose are no substitute for competitive pay, but they can alleviate some of the pressure linked to pay expectations.)

8. Enhancing employees

The capacity of skilled workers to maintain their employability will depend on their ability to interact with AI. They will need to leverage the advantages of automation to increase their performance by focusing on strategic tasks and human interactions.

Employees who have traditionally faced the risk of having their jobs outsourced to cheaper locations now also have to worry about the danger of having their work taken over by machines. While experts don’t yet fully agree about which jobs are the most at risk of being automatized, the risk will not be restricted to manual, repetitive tasks.

The challenge for many organizations is to retain an irreplaceable human touch while also taking advantage of these new technologies. For the mobility function in particular, the question will be to determine the right split between tasks that can or should be automatized thanks to increasing use of AI, outsourced to providers and freelancers, or handled in-house by the HR team. Enhancing and reskilling could also foster the inclusion of minority groups in the workforce.

9. ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance)

The sustainability concept and ESG analyses are often used by investors, but they are becoming relevant for all parts of the business. Increasing awareness and providing training on ESG issues is usually a first step. Education programs should not be purely prescriptive and need to help line management and assignees reflect on possible initiatives to limit the environmental impact of mobility or use assignments to foster ESG goals in the host locations. Mobile employees can play a role as ambassadors, spreading best practices.

Environmental considerations should be taken into account when working with external vendors. Procurement guidelines might already be in place at the corporate level, but they could be complemented by questions focused on mobility issues.

Information about the travel/relocation carbon footprint and how to compensate for it should be captured. This information might already be available (e.g., as part of the business travel process), but it should be consolidated and reported as part of the mobility activities.

Organizations need to emphasize social issues and the needs of the whole person (e.g., community, purpose, job satisfaction) and also consider the needs of families.

New mobility models require new forms of social interaction, inclusion, and employee support. The question of the productivity of the remote workforce will partly depend on the companies’ ability to foster remote workers’ wellbeing. Training the local workforce should be part of the assignees’ performance indicators. Opportunities for employees to partner with local communities and do charitable work could also be encouraged.

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Olivier Meier
Olivier Meier

Written by Olivier Meier

Exploring trends about people management, workforce mobility, globalization, work from anywhere and the future of work. www.linkedin.com/in/olivieraemeier

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