This article is taken from chapter 1 of the K2 Bespoke guide to Successful business-critical (VIP) assignments.
Building a robust and flexible global mobility framework is a challenging undertaking. Not only do you need to ensure optimum alignment with your overall HR and business strategy, but also remain as agile as possible in order to meet the expectations of today’s talented employees.
If you manage to get a handle on all the key elements and devise a multi-layered mobility framework, it may feel like you have everything covered. But in reality, however flexible your framework, there will always be occasions when an assignment falls outside of standard policies and programme coverage.
1. Extraordinary employee value
When your employee or workforce population has significant prominence within and is of significant value to your business. Distractions must be minimised in order to protect productivity. The risk factor is high due to the business-critical nature of the employee’s role – this increases the pressure on both the employee and the team responsible for their relocation.
2. Extraordinary destination risk
Where the destination presents a complex set of challenges, over and above a typical hardship location where allowances and services. This is over and above a typical hardship location, where allowances and services will be in place to mitigate and manage risk. Extraordinary destination risk transpires if the destination is particularly inhospitable, has acute security risks or is a new location.
3. Extraordinary personal requirement
Where the personal requirements of your employee or workforce population – often involving their families – present unique and complex challenges.
4. Extraordinary organisational requirement
Where your organisation’s own requirements create challenges. For example, where time-critical deadlines take priority, or where an exceptional level of flexibility is demanded from your employee or workforce population.
Research shows that up to 5% of global assignments fall into the business-critical category – in these instances, the level of policy exceptions required to make the assignment work make the existing policy unviable. Creating a new policy would be equally unviable due to the unique nature of the employee’s requirements, requirements which are highly unlikely to be replicated in future assignments.
Human considerations must also be taken into account. Relocation can be an emotive and stressful time, with strategic and personal factors constantly vying for precedence. A ‘one size fits all’ approach simply cannot be applied to such assignments.
If you would like to discover more you can unlock the complete guide to Successful business-critical (VIP) assignments today.
Whether you wish to build a business-critical programme from scratch, or simply evolve/extend an existing programme, our experienced specialists are here to help, speak to a member of the K2 Bespoke team today.
