Club 100 Network Huddle - 20th June 2024

The sun was shining in London as Club 100 gathered for our latest global mobility network huddle. It was a joy to see so many familiar friendly faces! We kicked things off with an ice breaker that revealed a surprising royal twist - many attendees wouldn't mind a mentoring session with the royals. Perhaps a future keynote speaker idea!!

We kicked off the first huddle discission, tackling the thorny issue of employee vs business driven moves and the differences that do, but perhaps shouldn’t, exist between the two. The first hurdle was defining exactly what an employee driven move is – Is applying for an open vacancy supporting the business or the individual?! The consensus was employee driven moves are generally given less budget and support and thus the business does often prefer to spin it this way, it’s up to GM to protect the true needs of a relocation! One innovative member even has an employee initiated policy – A great way to make it clear and fair for all!

Next up were the corporate updates where Zoe Wild shared some exciting insights into the GM programme at NATS. They are busy creating a short term international development policy, a HK recruitment campaign and a local plus policy! They aren’t stopping there either as they will be reviewing all their policies and sustainability efforts over the next 12 months!

Tom Pike then gave us the inside scoop from NetApp where they are busy with the anticipation of AI, Tom already uses AI daily to help with his workload! They have also condensed their polices down from 14 to 4, have curbed many legacy costs and are about to look at group moves and rotational assignments.

Some thought leadership was next on the agenda with Julia Palmer from Santa Fe Relocation guiding us through the evolution of their GM surveys over the past 5 years. We saw how GM has shifted from being all about compliance, cutting costs and getting visibility to AI, remote/hybrid working and education. One area of particular interest was wellbeing throughout the relocation journey – 50% of GM teams are responsible and accountable for wellbeing! We think it’s only going to become more of an issue and were glad to get some insight into the measures we can take.

It was time to introduce a very important new member to the Club 100 network…Marie Piper the hot potato mascot! Marie was passed around the room as we delved into managing inexperienced managers, GM team secondees, assignment allowances methodology and so much more!

We then went from Paperwork to Powerplay as Mus Bharmal and Hien Tran from Global Expat Pay showed us how we can harness data to revolutionise our functions. A poll showed the top 3 challenges in the room were manual processes, unreliable reporting and unpredictable vendor cots. We had a look at how we can solve the root cause of many issues by using automation and data management – Resulting in happier assignees and less stressed teams!

It was time to shake room up in everyone’s favourite debate game – perspective playground! The room argued for and against conducting regular RFP’s and we saw some great arguments from both sides! We won’t reveal the winners here (what happens in the room, stays in the room!) but we did pick up some serious messages around good vendor management.

We wrapped up in the sunny garden (joined by the parakeets overhead) with drinks and nibbles and there was absolutely no talk about a football match. We hope to see you again soon at our next events!