Global Mobility European Super Huddle 2023

Any hopes of leaving the rain in the UK were quickly dashed as the team landed in Amsterdam, the day beforethe European Super Huddle. Having found some umbrellas, dodged lots of bikes and eaten a waffle or two, we arrived at the conference room to get ready for the big day. The usual flutter of activity ensued, moving tables, placing notebooks and testing microphones, making sure everything was perfect.

On the morning of the 08^th November, we welcomed our members with open arms (and breakfast). Our icebreaker activity revealed the true talent in the room – We have members ranging from ex-Arsenal footballers to sprinters and even a cheap-holiday expert!

We dove straight into our first huddle discussion of the day, “Mission Improbable”, where we discussed the balance between being a “compliance team” and a “business enabling team”. We decided it comes down to the risk appetite and flexibility of each company but all agreed the core function of GM is to enable business!

Natalie Steinberg from myGMPD gave us an insight into the GMPD programme and stressed the importance of learning and development when dealing with the current challenges in our GM world. The remit of GM has expanded so rapidly and GMPD really can provide the continuous development we need to help keep on top of it all.

Next up, Daniel Roelands from Unilever gave us a great insight into his recent work in the GM team. Unilever is comprised of 5 different business units, each with different needs and budgets, and Daniel is on a journey to transform all of the GM policies to suit. With a plan to launch in 2024 benchmarking is well underway, please do let us know if you would like to participate and also share in the results and we will do what we do best - link you up!

Tiffany Remjin talked us through what she has been up to at Uber and she also had a focus on new policies. The policies were very outdated when Tiffany joined and she has gone through the process of trying to immediately reduce noise and exceptions on the perm policy before she turns her attention to the exec and LTA policies. I loved the idea of giving education refreshes to the business every quarter!

Another hot topic was next, Gareth Davies from Equus Software discussed the Reality of AI within GM. Only 33% of people think they already useAI every day, but actually 77% of us do. Our live poll revealed 69% of organisations in the room already use AI in some capacity, but only 20% in the GM function. AI can be used as an enabler and to add value but has developed so rapidly that we must also think about the risks such as confidentiality, biometrics, scams and countless more possibilities. We expect to see a shift in the next 2 years with 62% of people in the room expecting to use AI for automation, 54% for data analytics and 22% for self-service solutions.

Newland Chase gave an immigration update and following on from the AI talk, Nargiz Garadaghi and Mandy Janzen’s prevailing themes were advances in digitization and AI, immigration as an economic lever and continued protectionism. Technology (ETA’s, E-Visas, ETIAS, E Gates, etc.) are growing, they save time and admin but also come with flaws such as delays and breakdowns. 70% of established e-visas in 2023 have been introduced since 2020 and the pace of change is not slowing in all areas, we must adapt to stay in top of this ever joined-up compliance world. We then looked at the latest regional updates in Belgium, the Netherland and the Israel-Palestine crisis.

For our second huddle discussion, “The People have Spoken”, we let the room decide which topic we would discuss and the winner was (drumroll please…) remote work! We found that some GM teams are reluctant to take on remote work with the legal complexities, scope creep, lack of control and headcount amongst the things making them hide under their desks! We found risk appetite was very dependent on the business and that using training/education and consent forms/formalised processes can help to communicate the chosen approach to the business.

Simon Goodison from Smarter Not Harder had the room gripped as he gave us tools, tips and techniques to maximise personal productivity and work/life balance – meaning we could unlock up to 15% capacity! The simple is not always obvious and we learnt about the “holiday phenomenon”, planning a 4 week view, managing emails and the all-important rewards!

Our Hot Potato was centred around furniture and how we balance cost, policy and ESG when assignees want to either ship, rent or buy furniture. Each come with their own pros and cons and it can be difficult to balance this with the needs of the business and the assignee. This could become a thread through a lot of GM benefits with an increasing spotlight on ESG!

We rounded off the day with our networking drinks where the chatter and laughter was as loud as ever. I saw members sharing stories, LinkedIn invitations, email addresses and winding down with a drink or two!