Immobile Global Mobility – an emerging threat to the industry.

In July last year the CIPD reported global mobility as the fastest growing area for HR Professionals. In 2013, PwC released a survey in which they forecasted a 50% rise in international assignments over the next 10 years. This would not just come from long-term assignments; since 2002 short-term assignments (assignments less than 12 months) had doubled from 10% to 20% of the total number of assignments.

Cartus undertook a study in 2014 to add further support, in which they asked participants how their mobility program had changed in the last twelve months. 49% responded with an increase in short term assignments.

In April this year, a joint initiative from the Canadian ERC (CERC) & the European Relocation Association (EURA) presented results from their “Survey of surveys.” They reviewed 57 global mobility reports incumbent of 25000 global mobility professionals. They found that 89% of organisations will increase their global workforce in the next two years. 

So, from a growth perspective everything looks very rosy in the mobility sector.

However, CERC & EURA also reported that 74% of Managers surveyed had reduced assignment costs in respect to economic pressures.

This has further support from Brookfield GRS, who released their global mobility trend survey in June this year. Of 163 multinational companies surveyed, 69% of participant’s biggest focus was on cutting costs of their mobility program.

Obviously increased growth & reduced costs are not two things that tend to go hand in hand on your standard economic chart. But if you look at current growth trends the focus on reducing GM expenditure could be detrimental to a firm being able to hire the best talent. According to the CERC & EURA report, 80% of millennials want to work outside of their home country at some stage of their career. Deloitte also reported that they expect millennials to account for about 60% the assignment population by 2026.

With this shift in millennial views on working internationally, you would think firms would be putting their global mobility program at the heart of their talent attraction strategy. However, according to Brookfield’s survey only 10% of respondents are engaged with workforce planning.

If there has been a change in employees attitudes to travel, surely mobility strategy should be moving with it to focus on attracting the best talent? From the evidence provided, it suggests that if firms are not careful they could end up missing out altogether. Cost cutting is not a new idea, but I believe mobility should be forming a more central part of a firm’s global strategy rather than an afterthought.

Having  not even discussed any of the issues around mobility compliance & the costs that can be incurred by not being compliant; I think it is fairly clear that mobility as a whole has a huge part to play in shaping the development of not just people’s careers, but a firm’s global strategy. I just hope the pressure to cut costs is not such an influencing factor to limit both parties.