The value of mobility: measuring talent mobility outcomes

As pressure mounts?on?mobility teams to deliver value,?companies?are?trying?to measure?the return on investment (ROI) of mobility?more accurately, with the?objective?of finally ending?the perception?that talent mobility is?an expensive exercise without clear value. Being able to quantify the?benefit?of mobility is a way to?relate it to tangible?business objectives?and better communicate?its value to?top management.?

However, several problems make?the calculation of ROI?difficult: we have a clear understanding of direct costs,?but indirect ones are more difficult to capture. The question of?value is even more challenging.?According to?Mercer’s?2020 Worldwide?Survey of?International Assignments Policies and Practices?Survey, half of companies do not define assignment failure,?many have a narrow definition of success (e.g., merely?completing the?assignment),?and?others?have only limited information about the performance of assignees.?

If we want to understand the value of mobility, we?need to add one more step before attempting to calculate the ROI. We need to?understand the different?mobility outcomes.??

Defining the outcomes?

We need to differentiate three types of interrelated outcomes:?

• Business?outcomes:?These outcomes are related to business growth and?profitability?and?the acquisition of market share and new?clients.?This is?often?the priority for top?management,?but?measuring these business outcomes in isolation does not tell much about the value of mobility itself?or to what extent these business outcomes can be attributed to the action of moving employees.?
• Mobility outcomes:?These are related to the process of relocating?employees.?The outcomes could be about the employee?(satisfaction?and?wellbeing?of the assignee and the family,?as well as?retention and performance)?or?about the receiving business unit?(did it benefit from the assignment?)?or?the mobility teams?(how efficient was the assignment process?).?
• Talent management?(workforce)?outcomes: These include the?career of mobile employees, their skills, their experiences,?and how these were affected by mobility.?These outcomes affect the talent pool and the capacity of the organization to address skill gaps.?It helps?to reveal?some of the indirect costs and benefits of mobility as well as?of the long-term value.?

A narrow focus?on business outcomes?fails?to capture the role of mobility. An assignee can be successful for a year but fail to train?local peers?or grow the host business for the longer term. A narrow definition of ROI could misrepresent this?short-term success as a?high-value?move.?In reality,?it?brought?very little to the business?over the long term. Similarly, a good business outcome (such as?growth of the host business)?leading to the loss of talent?(bad experience in assignment or absence of post assignment career planning)?is not a success?for the business?either.??

Likewise, focusing purely on the mobility or the talent management aspects?would fail to connect these outcomes with the financial aspects of the business. It would lead?to perception that?mobility is,?at worst,?all about costs or,?at best,?a heavy investment?to maintain employee satisfaction?and retention with unclear long-term business benefits.??

The different outcomes could reinforce each other: talent management outcomes can drive?a strong talent pipeline that will?in turn?drive better business outcomes?in the future. They can also conflict with each other: short-term profitability and cost control can be at odd with mobility experience and talent management. In practice, there will often be trade-offs between these?different aspects of mobility.?

When the balance?among?the different outcomes?is?too?skewed, the overall value of mobility?is?at risk. This might not be always?immediately?visible. Assignees?may?apparently?be?very?satisfied (good support leading to a?positive mobility outcome),?but mobility?does not?benefit the talent pipeline (no?career management?process?post assignment),?or the business value of the assignment is questionable (no evidence that the receiving business unit is performing better).?

Assessing?the outcomes?

For each type of outcome, several types of indicators should be used. These indicators can include quantitative inputs?(e.g.?figures from finance) as well as feedback from the stakeholders (employee and line management interviews).?

Here are examples of indicators for each type of outcome:

Business?outcomes?(specific to tasks?assigned)??

Direct and?indirect costs, profitability increase, revenue?growth, client acquisition, processes and compliance rules implemented in receiving unit?(versus prior?to an assignment, versus performance of local peers).?

Mobility?outcomes?(specific to the action of sending an assignee)?

Assignee?satisfaction survey, receiving unit feedback,?training completion (assignee or local peers depending on the type of assignment),?assignment completion rate, mobilization metrics (time to activate assignments), mobility promoter score (likelihood of former assignees to recommend an assignment to a colleague).?

Talent?management?outcomes?(specific to skill sourcing/talent brokering and career management)?

Retention rate, internal labor market?analysis (career progression?measurement), talent pipeline analysis, skills?gap analysis, career parity, pay progression,?diversity?and inclusion?metrics.?

Some indicators are short-term ones,?while others?require?digging?deeper into the long-term impact of mobility.?The retention rate at the end of the assignment is a poor indicator of a successful outcome if taken in isolation. Many assignees resign one or two years after their assignment as they perceive their skills are not used or no new suitable career opportunities are available. Longer-term retention rates can be measured using an internal?labor market?analysis. This type of analysis shows not only if former assignees stay in the organization but also their career progression. In many cases, the career of former assignees stalls as organizations fail to leverage their newly acquired skills. In these cases, retention is not a positive sign: the employees do not progress in their career anymore and the organizations are burdened with demotivated, underperforming talent.?

Making sense of?the outcomes?

Over the past twenty years, companies have increasingly segmented their mobility programs?by assignment purpose: business critical moves, developmental moves, self-requested moves.?The purpose of the assignments influence how we assess?mobility outcomes. A?business critical?move?is more likely to be?focused on business outcomes. However,?failed mobility outcomes?(bad experience?for the assignee) or talent outcomes (not career benefit or loss of talent) could invalidate the business outcome.?For developmental moves, the?focus?is?on talent outcome.?In other words, the?expectations?in terms of learning and subsequent career progression are higher than for other types of moves.?Yet, mobility and business outcomes cannot be ignored.?A lack of?understanding of what the development moves add to the business results (even indirectly or over the long?term) would make developmental unsustainable in the eyes of management.?

More generally the importance of mobility in the general business strategy also influences?the outcome analysis.?How strategic is mobility?in a given organization? If mobility is considered as a strategic exercise, the expectations in terms of outcomes will far outmatch the ones in a company that uses?assignments?in an opportunistic way to?plug?ad-hoc?talent gaps or accommodate employee requests. The level of value generated and the granularity of the analyses required will be different. For companies with a strategic view of mobility,?it?has to?generate?over?time?significant,?measurable?value?consistently, whereas for?organizations with more opportunistic views?of mobility,?a more?high-level?assessment of the value of ad-hoc moves might be sufficient.??

Problems?of attribution and the perils of correlation?

Attributing an outcome to the mobility process and more precisely to the actions of a mobile employee is a delicate process. Is the successful outcome the result of the assignee? Would it have been different in the absence of assignment? An?outcome?has to?be attributed?to the assignee?and?to the fact that the person has been mobile?to be relevant to help measuring the value of mobility. If one of these?two?conditions is missing, the impact?on value?is questionable.?

The problem is in no way limited to mobility: HR has always been struggling with performance evaluation. Is the employee performing exceptionally,?or is this person?simply?in the right team, at the right time but in?reality?not contributing?the performance of the business? Furthermore, a decision may be the right one in the short term but the wrong one for the long term. A?common example in mobility management is the choice of a compensation approach that saves?costs for the short term but generates?long-term,?ongoing costs for the company. A narrow vision of the mobility outcomes in terms of?scope?and?duration?can be misleading.?

The?development of analytics?is increasingly helping HR separate facts from opinions,?but?for?mobility professionals?the task is more challenging.?The temptation to correlate?a?minor change in policies?with a positive outcome?must be resisted. In reality, the complexity?of the factors?make it difficult to evaluate outcomes. That is not to say that measuring the value is impossible,?but it requires?a combination of different elements:??

• Analyses at a relevant?level (depending on what you want to achieve/how strategic mobility is for the organization)?
• Exploring different angles (analyzing the different outcomes and how they interact with each other)?
• And?the persistence of results over time (there is a human tendency to mistake luck and randomness with good performance)?

Finding a reasonable path?

We should not give up our efforts to?define the right formula for assessing?ROI,?but setting up a dashboard to monitor the different outcomes of mobility is a useful first step. Such a dashboard is?in itself a?complex?exercise that requires input for multiple teams (starting with finance and talent management),?but it?helps focus on what should be a first goal.?This?is not so much?about?finding one simple?formula as determining a?pragmatic?way to monitor the value of assignment by taking into account?its different aspects?and producing reports that are?good enough?for the purpose of management decisions?in a given organization.?