As businesses continue to expand rapidly into the world, global mobility has become an essential aspect of today’s workforce. Although adopting a global mobility strategy can seem daunting at first, the benefits of introducing a global mobility program into your business are numerous.
Accessing more diverse talent pools. The ability to expand into new business markets. Increased cost efficiencies in key markets. Greater knowledge transfer between your key workers.
But it’s no longer enough to simply have a grasp of what global mobility is. You also need to adopt a global mobility strategy for your business.
What Is Global Mobility?
Global mobility is the ability of a company and its workforce to move and operate around the world with efficiency while hiring employees internationally. And here’s the good news: global mobility is a benefit for both your business and your employees. It offers employees the chance to relocate and work in other countries, further enabling them to grow both professionally and personally. Likewise, companies that embrace global mobility can expand into international markets, grow quicker, become more profitable, and even see an increase in employee acquisition and retention.
But as you scale international and remote teams, you’re going to face challenges too. We’ll explain the benefits and challenges in more depth in the next section.
Benefits of Global Mobility in Business
As previously mentioned, global mobility has several benefits for the modern global workforce. Here are just a few of the benefits of having a global mobility solution.
Global Mobility Allows You to Tap into New Markets
Perhaps the most obvious benefit of global mobility is that it allows your business to tap into new markets abroad. Having a physical presence with local talent is a crucial step in creating an effective global expansion strategy. This can also give your business a competitive advantage by establishing your company as a leader before other competitors enter the market. Furthermore, having revenue streams coming from multiple countries provides greater stability and makes your business more resilient to uncertainty and change.
Global Mobility Promotes New Ideas and Perspectives
Having employees around the world, and not just in the United States, gives your business a unique advantage in being able to understand and learn from new perspectives. Employees who relocate to new countries can also gain a better understanding of international markets, which can be a valuable asset for your business. Additionally, having remote teams can help you become a more diverse and inclusive company.
Global Mobility Gives You Access to the Best Talent
By embracing global mobility and enabling your team to work from anywhere, you can widen your talent pool significantly. As a result, you’re much more likely to secure the best people for the job, as an international employee may be the best option.
Global Mobility Encourages Professional Development
The freedom to travel the world opens the door to an abundance of new learning opportunities for employees. Global talent mobility empowers employees to seek new opportunities that can positively impact their professional and personal development. Furthermore, the flexibility to grow and learn new skills in their roles from anywhere in the world can also increase job satisfaction and employee retention for workers who want to relocate.
Global Mobility Challenges & Solutions
Below are some challenges you may face with global mobility, as well as some global mobility solutions to help you overcome them.
Legal Requirements
Legal variations across countries and jurisdictions pose one of the biggest challenges to global mobility management. Every country has different laws concerning employment, immigration, and permanent establishment. Hence, you may experience more restrictions in some countries than in others.
These experts can coordinate with specialists in immigration law to secure the necessary visas and work permits, navigate residency requirements, and handle any legal issues that may arise during the relocation process.
They can also work with international tax advisors to manage dual taxation risks, ensure tax compliance in both the home and host countries, and implement tax equalisation policies to mitigate financial disparities for employees.
Additionally, they can offer detailed guidance on how to handle benefits and compensation packages, pension contributions, and social security obligations, ensuring that employees remain compliant with local regulations while abroad.
Example: Omnipresent’s global employment platform has been built with the help of legal experts who have advised multiple businesses on tax compliance and permanent establishment risk.
Global Payroll Compliance
Another challenge to consider as an employer regards global mobility tax, specifically relating to global payroll. When hiring internationally or relocating an employee, it’s necessary to examine international payroll processing and payroll tax policies and rates.
Municipalities, states, and nations have different rates and global payroll tax requirements that vary each fiscal year. Forgetting to include them in your business strategies can bring your global move to a stop. Again, working with a global employment partner like Omnipresent can help you navigate this compliantly.
Employee Acclimatisation
Another challenge you may encounter concerns employee acclimatisation. Moving to a new country presents many challenges, and it may take employees a while to adjust to living in a new country. These challenges can include not speaking the host country’s native language, adjusting to new cultural norms, not knowing their way around, and being homesick for their family and friends.
To help with employee acclimatisation, keep these challenges in mind when developing your global mobility program and include measures that specifically address them. For example, you might offer complimentary language lessons for employees moving to a different country. You can also connect employees with any contacts your business has in their new country to help acclimatise them to the country’s social norms and culture. Finally, you might consider adding a travel stipend for international employees to use whenever they want to take time off to visit their home country.
Strategies to Build a Global Mobility Program
The plans you design when building a global mobility program determine whether your international venture will be successful. Here are a few strategies to consider when designing your global mobility program.
1. Build a Strategy Development Team
You’ll need to bring together an expert team to effectively design your global mobility policy. This development team should include all potential stakeholders, such as company executives, hHuman resources professionals, administrative leaders, and legal and compliance experts.
Every company will have a different company structure. But broadly speaking, we’d recommend following these steps to ensure your team is a success.
Define roles and responsibilities:
Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each team member. Ensure that everyone understands their specific contributions and how they fit into the overall strategy.
Schedule regular meetings and updates:
It’s important to hold regular meetings to discuss progress, address challenges, and update the strategy as needed. Continuous communication will help keep this team aligned and focused on common goals.
2. Identify the Program’s Goals
Once you have a strategy development team in place, hold a meeting to identify what specific goals you want the global workforce mobility program to achieve. Start by identifying what you consider to be the program's primary goal. For example, is accessing global talent the most important goal? Are you expanding into a new market? Or are you more concerned with allowing current employees more freedom and flexibility? Use this big-picture goal to guide the rest of your strategy.
Identifying the goals of your global workforce strategy also means it’s easier to communicate to your employees.
3. Understand the Legal Complexities
Employee relocation from one country to another is legally complex, as is hiring new recruits abroad. Understanding these legal implications is really important for mitigating risk and ensuring your global mobility policy is compliant with international laws. So, be sure to use internal or external expertise to navigate international laws before hiring or moving talent abroad so you maintain global mobility compliance.
If you’re hiring or moving talent to a country where you don’t already have a local entity (such as a foreign subsidiary), it can be highly useful to work with an Employer of Record (EOR) service to employ talent on your behalf. EORs handle onboarding, payroll, benefits, and more in compliance with local requirements.
4. Look at Immigration Legislation
Immigration is an essential element to include in your global mobility policy. It’s important to research your destination countries’ work and residence requirements since they differ from country to country.
Work with your strategy development team to compile a list of all necessary work and residency permits for all countries your employees will work from. Next, decide how much of the global immigration process your business will handle and what employees are responsible for handling themselves. Be sure to provide employees with detailed information on everything they need to know about the relocation process.
Alternatively, you may want to work with an external expert, such as our partner Jobbatical, to handle the global immigration process on your behalf and save time.
5. Design a Compensation Structure
A compensation structure lets your employees know what to expect in terms of salary and benefits when relocating to a new country. This provides your team members with transparency and fairness, enhancing their overall employee experience. Factors to evaluate when creating a structure include exchange rates, cost of living differences, travel compensation, and pay rises. Learn more about how to salary benchmark in our guide.
Global Mobility FAQs
Designing a global mobility strategy has many moving parts and it’s natural that both you and your employees will have many questions. Here are some of the other most frequently asked questions that both you and your employees may have along the way. What Are Global Mobility Services?
This article covered some ways you can build a global mobility program in-house, but you could also work with a third-party company that provides global mobility services for you.
Companies that offer global mobility services specialize in helping other businesses achieve global mobility. For example, if your company was interested in expanding globally, a third-party’s global mobility services could help your business with things like ensuring immigration compliance, international tax and payroll compliance, risk mitigation, and more.
What Is a Global Mobility Consultant?
A Global Mobility Consultant or a global mobility specialist works with companies and their employees to facilitate the success of their global mobility program. The consultant’s job is to ensure that employee relocations go as smoothly as possible. They communicate directly with employees and employers alike to address any issues and provide ongoing support. A Global Mobility Consultant could be an excellent asset to developing your company’s global mobility program and might work in-house or as an outsourced employee.
What Is Shadow Payroll and How Does it Affect Global Mobility?
Shadow payroll is the practice of calculating and reporting the appropriate tax liabilities for international employees to their respective host countries while still paying them from their home country’s payroll. Essentially, shadow payroll allows employers to stay compliant with tax obligations in both the employee’s host and home countries without having to run two global payroll systems. This is particularly relevant for employees who will only work in another country for a limited time and are subject to tax laws in their host and home countries. Shadow payroll is often utilized by multinational companies with employees who frequently travel to other countries for work as a way to stay compliant with tax and employment laws.
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