Enhancing global mobility, navigating a changing landscape

In an increasingly global economy, global mobility has become even more essential to the success of businesses. HR and global mobility functions are increasingly acting as strategic partners, at the heart of the drive to achieve greater productivity and growth in new markets worldwide. As a global organisation you are continually looking to broaden your reach, adapt to future business requirements, and develop key talent. Working across national borders, you need the ability to move your people around quickly, easily and compliantly.

At K2, we understand this, and are equipped to help. Our advisory services professionals provide tailored advice and practical solutions. We will help you to identify strategic and operational opportunities, enhance value to the business, mitigate risk, and ensure compliance.

The K2 way, defining your business value

At K2, we do things differently. We take a step back before launching into any review and design of a mobility programme, policy or process. We believe it is important that we understand your business and HR/talent strategies, and then align the global mobility strategy to ensure it delivers true value.

Working closely with you, we will develop and agree an effective approach to managing your global mobility programme, defining and documenting your global mobility strategy and framework. The mobility framework will help to ensure:

• The right people are selected, incentivised, developed and retained.
• Roles, responsibilities and timings are clear.
• Assignment purpose, objectives and personal development goals are defined, documented and owned.
• Move drivers are identified to align business priority with developmental priority and business value.
• Policies are fit for purpose, benchmarked and support business objectives.
• Upfront planning opportunities are maximised for both the individual and the business.
• A rigorous governance process is implemented.

Subject matter experts, invaluable experience

Our advisory services team are global mobility subject matter experts. Our experience spans all aspects of global mobility, gained managing in-house corporate global assignment programmes and through independent consulting projects.

We have spent time in multiple and varied industries – from leading financial institutions, cutting-edge telecoms, online retail giants, to multinational oil and gas concerns. We work with our clients as true business partners – becoming an extension of your HR function with a focus on strategic, cost effective and business driven solutions.

We pride ourselves on building excellent working relationships to truly understand your organisation, ways of working and individual needs. Our approach is agile, flexible and independent, and always tailored to fit your organisational culture, structure, priorities and budget.

Programme, policy and process

Developing strategic discipline, enhancing your value and impact

The constant need to increase your global mobility service impact and return on investment demands a more strategic approach. Defining and documenting your global mobility strategy and aligning it with your talent and business strategies ensures your policy and programme design successfully fits with your organisational strategy.

At K2, we set out to work with you to develop a suite of global guidelines or policies that consider requirements for flexibility and a tiered approach. We review, write, benchmark and provide best practice recommendations, all tailored to your specific needs.

Policy benchmarking

Ensuring clarity of accountability, maintaining competitiveness

Policies should be competitive, not only in terms of the external market and industry sector, but also in terms of internal equity and company culture. Considering what other companies offer can be key to attracting the right talent. Well-conceived policies should also provide clarity when dealing with accountability issues or activities that are of critical importance to your global mobility service.

At K2, we can assist you with:

• Reviewing your current approach and support provided to existing relocating employees.
• Interviewing your key global mobility stakeholders to understand any issues or challenges that relate to the current policy approach.
• Working with you to determine whether to benchmark against industry, region or specific companies.
• Conducting benchmarking and providing consolidated data and recommendations.

Virtual assignments

More companies are considering virtual assignments — and investigating what these opportunities mean for the company and the employee.

How can this agile and flexible approach be maximised, not to replace physical relocations and traditional assignments but as an additional mobility option to meet business needs?

We can help you identify and consider the benefits and challenges of virtual assignments, providing insight into some of the key pros, cons and potential risk areas. Although the employee does not physically relocate, virtual assignments need to be addressed, tracked and managed correctly. They enable agility, offer international experience to a wider population within the organisation and can be a good way to expand the talent pool.

However, virtual assignments may also bring their own compliance risks, they will not work for every role or location, and have the potential to offer more complex management challenges.

Cost scenarios

Defining your assignment rationale, effectively managing costs

Policies should balance cost and business need. Assignments can be expensive; however the aims and potential value can outweigh this. To ensure clarity in decision making it is important to develop a well-defined selection process which identifies move drivers to help determine policy eligibility and drive value and return on investment.

To ensure you can clearly justify the rationale and costs associated with an assignment we can assist with:

• Producing cost estimate scenarios based on proposed policies.
• Creating a detailed policy governance process to identify and capture deviations/exceptions to policy.

Planning and compliance

Navigating the complexities, mitigating costly risks

Compliance is a key consideration for any global mobility programme. Upfront tax planning to ensure assignments are structured correctly and benefits are delivered in a cost-effective way is critical. Defining how assignment benefits will be delivered will ensure that processes are developed to track and report year-end compliance activities and inform internal budgeting.

When employees step over a border, be it state-to-state or country-to-country, they can inadvertently create complexities and compliance risks for themselves or your organisation. Non-compliance can lead to a myriad of issues such as damaged reputation, financial penalties and liabilities, and cancellation of immigration related licences which permit the right to work.

At K2, we can help you navigate the complexities of international relocation compliance, ensuring no paperwork goes unfiled and no essential steps in the intricate process are overlooked. We can review and audit current programme set up delivery, highlight potential exposure and any risk, provide recommendations and implement solutions.

We work with you to:

• Review benefits for the most tax efficient delivery on a global basis.
• Document delivery mechanisms.
• Review and update tax policy.
• Review social security planning and cost implications.
• Review international and local employment legislation.

Policy writing

Providing expert advice, developing fit-for-purpose policies

As global mobility supports the business in meeting its strategic needs and objectives, well-documented, detailed guidelines and policies are essential to facilitate consistent service delivery, mitigate risk, ensure compliance and provide a seamless experience for your relocating employee.

To enable this, we can support the writing of:

• Detailed policy documents.
• Associated guidelines, checklists, letters and other relevant documentation.

Process reviews

Enhancing strategic value and service delivery, improving efficiency

Simple but effective and well-documented processes are critical to ensuring consistent service delivery in line with agreed roles and responsibilities, but your current processes may require review to support new policies or a new service delivery model.

At K2, we can work with you to identify and review the tasks you manage in-house – interactions with vendors, roles and responsibilities, touch points, interdependencies, as well as potential areas of duplication. In reviewing your processes, we gain a full appraisal of the current impact of your global mobility function and identify opportunities for cost savings and increased efficiencies. We always ensure our recommendations are realistic and practicable and tailored to your business needs.

We work with you to:

• Identify and document roles and responsibilities.
• Create future state processes based on an agreed service delivery model.

Vendor selection and management reviews

Getting the most from your vendor, service success and employee satisfaction

The vendors you use around the world are vital to smooth running of your global mobility programme. But making sure they deliver on their obligations can be a challenge.

Our advisory services experts have extensive experience working with, and managing, vendors across the globe thanks to prior in-house experience, and K2’s own extensive Global Approved Partner Programme where we manage accredited service providers in 186 countries.

Based on your needs, our advisory team can help identify the rationale for vendor selection or review and evaluate current relationships and costs against service levels and the market. We can define and implement transparent service level agreements and key performance indicators, and provide recommendations to enhance value for money, as well as assist with co-ordinating vendor selection and managing the full review or RFP process.

Group moves and new location

Efficient moves, fit-for-purpose expansion

When expanding your global reach into new regions it’s common to move teams of people to new locations to ensure you make the best possible impact in accessing those new markets. And, while moving one person to a new location can be a challenging task, moving a group of people can multiply those issues.

No matter the size or complexity, we can help manage the process from planning to completion. We work with you to co-ordinate every detail, and tailor all aspects to your specific requirements. We can even work with you to define your location needs and support you in making the evidence-based decisions necessary to decide where your best office location for regional expansion may be.

From research, compliance and due diligence, to needs identification, relocation support, briefings and settling in support, you can count on us to take care of your employee and business requirements.

We’ll explore everything from the facilities and resources available, to immigration requirements, and ensure that whatever the size, complexity of task or time frame, we will provide the tailored support that will make your group move or new office location successful.

Training and communications

First-hand experience and understanding, tailored packages to fit your needs

Your HR and global mobility services need to offer an exceptional level of service. They form part of setting the tone of your organisation, its culture and the talent you strive to attract and retain to ensure you remain competitive. Demonstrating you are experts, and alert and responsive to industry challenges and changes is therefore essential.

Our work means we’re at the heart of service delivery within the fast paced and ever-changing world of global mobility. To remain competitive, we too need to continuously maintain high service standards and develop and innovate to stay ahead. And thanks to the very nature of our business, and the excellent standard of service we commit to on behalf of our clients, we are well positioned and armed with the in-depth knowledge to provide expert training and communications support.

As part of our training offer, we provide an assessment of your training needs on a local, regional and/or global scale. Our advisory specialists work with you to develop bespoke training courses that are tailored to your specific needs and carried out in-house or off-site.

Based on their expertise, market knowledge, research, insights and understanding of best practice they develop courses on a wide variety of topical subjects. These can include issues such as the latest strategic or technical changes, legal and regulatory compliance, new process implementation, policies and team structure and much more. We deliver these courses, inclusive of materials, co-ordination and follow up.

We can also develop customised key stakeholder communication plans to help further facilitate change, develop best practice, or roll out new programmes, policies or processes.