Transformation of Global Mobility Programmes: A User Guide

Guest blog by Lucy Chittenden

I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with several global organisations throughout my career in Global Mobility over the last 20 plus years, onboarding new clients, implementing new technology and transforming Global Mobility functions and programmes.

I am passionate about supporting organisations in transforming their Global Mobility programmes. What follows is a snapshot of the process I go through when undertaking a GM transformation. I hope that my experiences and thoughts will resonate with and help others.

Defining Your Purpose and Goals

When you set out to transform a Global Mobility function and programme, it can seem fairly daunting and the question “where do I start?” may well be one of your initial thoughts. In my experience, these are some of the key considerations to help you get started:

• Think about what key things you want to achieve / the problems you want to solve – what is the purpose of this project? Capture the current state and future state – the “From” and “To”.
• Interviews with key stakeholders will help answer this question. Keep in mind that what you see as a problem may not be viewed the same way – or prioritised – by others, and vice versa. This is particularly relevant when you are new to an organisation.
• Gain an understanding of the key priorities for the business over the next 3 to 5 years.

Building Your Global Workforce Framework

• Identify the different types of international and domestic mobility in your organisation which form your Global Workforce and put together a Global Workforce framework to capture these. This will help with determining what policies you will need in your policy suite / guidelines or framework.
• Don’t try to do everything at the same time. Consider a phased approach, aligning to the priorities identified in your stakeholder interviews.

Securing Leadership Support

• Obtain sponsorship / partnership from your leadership teams in HR, Talent Acquisition, Total Rewards, Legal, Tax and Compliance.
• Determine how to keep them regularly updated and the best forums to do so. Take these key people with you on the journey to get the best outcome.

Leveraging Data Effectively

• Look at your data – do you have an accurate record of all employees who are currently on international assignment, those that have transferred internationally or repatriated from an international assignment over the last 3 years? As a previous line manager of mine said, “we live and die by our data in Global Mobility”, which is so true and is so important. Think about the best way to get this data and the different sources and teams you can link in with to obtain this data.
• Be mindful of GDPR and other data privacy requirements. I would recommend consulting with your Data Privacy / Data Security team first (if you have one), to ensure that you are not breaching data privacy regulations, by using data that you have not previously had access to. Some good places to start are:
  • Your HR Business Partners and Talent Acquisition / Recruitment teams and the records they hold.
  • Your HR system, if you have one – it may not be set up to capture international assignments but will be able to report on those employees who have changed work location from one country to another.
  • Your payroll team(s) – can they provide names and employee IDs of employees on a particular payroll – the expat payroll?
  • Travel data.
• The data will also help you to determine the size of the programme, and the resourcing levels needed to run the programme and the location of the team members.

Planning and Collaboration

• Don’t underestimate how long the work will take and how much of a collaborative approach you will need to take, as you will need to take others along the journey with you. It could take a year or longer to get new or updated policies launched and all key stakeholders and audiences engaged.
• Benchmarking – internal, with stakeholder interviews and external interviews – both with peers in the industry via Expat Academy benchmarking and conversations with your contacts.
• Expand your Global Mobility network, so you can tap into knowledge of others who have been through similar experiences.
• Engage support from key leadership / Board to transform the programme.
• Put a project plan together – workstreams and workstream leads – e.g. – Policy, Process, Technology/Systems, People, Documentation/Templates, Engagement.
• Roadmap and key milestones.

Documenting and Automating Processes

• Capture your current processes. That might even mean going back to basics and getting out flip chart pages and post it notes (I have certainly done that myself!). Have conversations with all the different stakeholders. As you go through this exercise, capture what is working well and what doesn’t work so well / could be simplified or streamlined. I would recommend capturing detailed process steps, with all the key players documented. Process maps are hugely beneficial, but it is also worth bearing in mind that they won’t be a format that everyone finds easy to follow, so consider also building checklists / tasks lists for the different parties.
• Put together a RACI to capture the roles and responsibilities and include the key stakeholders, consulting with them as you go through.
• Once you have the processes documented, think about what you could automate. This may well be the next phase of your programme transformation.

These are just a few ideas which I hope will help anyone leading or supporting the transformation of a Global Mobility programme.

Good luck!