Changes in the global geopolitical landscape can have a significant impact on your global mobility program. Relevant global trends affecting the mobility industry include nationalism, economic instability, mass migrations and regulatory shifts. Additionally, events that can impact mobility include the UK leaving the EU, or ‘Brexit’, the outcome of the U.S. election, political unrest in Venezuela, uncertainty in Qatar, housing prices, mobility volume and type and immigration challenges.
Here are four recommendations for navigating the changing geopolitical landscape.
1.Don’t Panic. The biggest advice right now is to understand how the changes or the potential changes from a geopolitical and immigration and compliance environment will impact your specific business and mobility objectives. Every organization is different in terms of their population demographics and the potential impact of changes. Have awareness of what potentially could happen and plan accordingly. The mobility team should take the opportunity to get in front of senior management within the organization to proactively communicate where there are potential issues or challenges or where pulling talent from alternate locations can be a solution. Also take the opportunity to stress the importance of planning.
2.Take Inventory. Understand your population, both your traditional assignment population on the long-term, short-term and perm transfer moves as well as business travelers. There's an increased focus on business travelers primarily from a revenue perspective for authorities in certain locations to make sure there is compliance from an immigration perspective. Employees traveling from certain locations may traditionally fall outside of the radar of the mobility function yet are potentially are impacted by some of these changes. Do an analysis and have conversations with your business partners to get in front of the issue and be proactive versus reactive as necessary.
3.Make a Plan. Be proactive in having plans and communications in place in the event of change. You may have to export people rapidly from a certain location and you may have to communicate very quickly to those impacted in your employee pool related to travel restrictions or potential delays in either entering or exiting a location. Build extra time into the assignment planning process. Communicate with your business partners so that they're clear on some of the potential delays related to visa and immigration. Back into the date talent is needed to ensure that visa and immigration compliance is in place on day one for the employee. Link up with the internal business partners within the organization including legal, tax, and finance to confirm plans sync up to take care of impacted employees. Review any duty of care policies and procedures.
4.Use Your Partners. Engage with vendors that help support your mobility programs and processes. Specifically, work with your immigration providers to understand who's impacted and what potentially to do to help support those impacted from an immigration perspective if and when changes take place.
View the Webinar, Geopolitical Climate Changes and the Impact on Global Mobility, to learn more.
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