Leaders in Global Mobility: Navigating Change and Opportunity

Our recent ‘Leaders in Global Mobility’ event ran with the tagline ‘navigating change and opportunity’ and as our subject matter experts BDO, Magrath Sheldrick and Global Expat Pay led discussions in their fields of expertise, nobody was left under the illusion that what were once considered unconventional Global Mobility practices are in fact becoming increasingly conventional. Traditional mobility – long and short term assignments – hasn’t gone away, (although BDO is seeing an overall reduction in the use of traditional mobility) but non-traditional mobility has arrived and is set to stay! Why? According to David Ellis (Partner, Strategic Reward Advisory – BDO), it’s all about flexibility! Employers are able to attract and retain talent through flexibility in how much people work, when they work, opportunities for career development, how they are rewarded and most importantly for Global Mobility where people work. The evolving international workforce, some or all of which might fall under the purview of Global Mobility, may include virtual assignments, international remote working and contractor workers. One of the key issues faced by Global Mobility in creating and implementing a work from anywhere policy is that arriving at the right solution for their organisation requires at least 8 experts to listen to one another. The cost to organisations of having global talent pool with the attendant benefits of being able to attract and retain the best and the brightest is not only tracking where (country) and when (frequency) employees are working but the nature if their role (are they for example a board director), the nature of the work that they are actually doing, who is employing them, and even the location of the work (home Vs office). All of this results in tax, immigration and labour law issues being more difficult to effectively manage.

BDO’s full analysis document “Implementation of Non-Dom Changes” can be found in the Expat Academy Vault.

As countries across the world increasingly seek to protect their domestic workforce, Global Mobility is likely to continue to need to show agility in deploying talent. Magrath Sheldrick highlighted that the immigration landscape highlighted continues to become more complex. The UK raised the minimum salary requirement for the skilled worker visa in 2024, whilst in 2025 a new administration in the US is likely to create a more restrictive immigration environment. This may include stricter entry restrictions, a more rigorous analysis of applications, increased vetting and requests for evidence. There are likely to be delays in visa issuance and renewals, and increased workplace audits. In Asia both China and Singapore have introduced an education verification process to make their immigration systems a little more robust. This rigorous assessment of education qualifications that can add up to three weeks in processing times in Singapore. The current challenge appears to be that there is not a uniform approach to assessing information.

Magrath Sheldrick produce regular immigration updates to give you all the information you need to help navigate the evolving immigration landscape.

Lastly, flexibility may be one of our key attributes but oftentimes Global Mobility can be a victim of its own success. Global Expat Pay’s Mike Hibberd highlighted a case study, which may sound familiar to many, where GM was successfully putting its fingers in the dam to plug the holes but wasn’t working with the business to anticipate what would be needed in the future. Mike highlighted 5 key triggers which often act, individually or contemporaneously, as a catalyst for transformation within Global Mobility:

• Digital transformation
• Cost reduction
• Speed & efficiency of deployments
• Compliance & risk
• Assignee experience

Global Expat Pay has a fantastic self-diagnostic tool to help evaluate what transformation could look like for your organisation.