Success Stories: Laying Foundations for Mobility Transformation
An EMEA headquartered Fortune Global 300 company, and one of the largest chemical manufacturers in the world with over 35,000 employees, sought a tailored consulting solution to lay the foundations of their mobility transformation design.
CLIENT PROFILE
Industry:
Chemical ManufacturingHQ Region:
EMEAProgram Size:
900 mobile employees globallyServices Provided:
- Talent Mobility Consulting
- Global Mobility Program Administration
CLIENT OBJECTIVES
To remain agile in the face of industry changes, the client decided to pursue a mobility transformation, assessing and adapting their current mobility operating model, practices, and policies. The initial step was the development of a strategic plan to evolve their international assignment program toward a more flexible framework capable of meeting the future business and workforce diversity needs.
The key mobility transformation objectives included:
- Involving and engaging broader Mobility and HR teams to incorporate global perspectives and collectively design and develop the future state
- Benchmarking their existing mobility structure and policy provisions against the contemporary mobility landscape and industry trends
- Updating assignment segmentation to balance benefits to the business and employee needs, thereby replacing the existing rigid and expensive policies and meeting the client’s objective of increasing the mobile population size
- Laying the foundation for better aligning Mobility with Talent Management and maximizing the value of mobility in upskilling employees and contributing to the organization’s future talent and leadership pipeline
The client initially constructed a case for transformation by building consensus and collectively designing a future state mobility function to strategically align with the wider business needs.
BGRS SOLUTION
BGRS’s Talent Mobility Consulting practice developed a tailored consulting solution to support the client’s mobility program transformation.
Key elements of the consulting solution included:
- In order to lay the foundation for a collaborative approach and create team-wide buy-in, BGRS designed and hosted an interactive workshop for the client’s Mobility team from around the world. BGRS presented contemporary industry trends and best practices and facilitated discussions about challenges and opportunities in the existing mobility structure, operating model, and policies
- BGRS delivered a benchmark of the client’s mobility program against the contemporary mobility landscape of 12 other organizations in similar industries or with comparable approaches to workforce mobility. In-depth interviews augmented the benchmark for robust insight into mobility program structures, management approaches, and diversity initiatives
New mobile employee personas were designed to align with the organization’s broader HR and talent profiles
- BGRS then facilitated a second interactive workshop, which covered:
- Identifying limitations of the existing model and policies, in the context of local nuances and relevant industry trends
- Segmenting mobility types according to business and development value
- Designing new mobile employee personas aligned with the organization’s broader HR and talent profiles
- Creating a flexible international assignment policy framework to suit diverse needs, consider assignment value, and drive efficiencies
- Conducting a broad analysis of the advantages, opportunities, challenges, and obstacles of implementing mobility transformation
- Outlining a strategic approach to align Mobility more closely with Talent
- BGRS subsequently delivered an action plan with recommended changes to the mobility operating model
RESULTS AND OUTCOMES
In the course of six months, BGRS completed the two phases of the active consultancy engagement and developed a support plan which included the following key results:
- Achieved broad functional buy-in and motivation for policy modernization and a consensus to transition from the one-size program to a flexible assignment framework
- Identified eight mobile employee personas, aligning the business and development value, and created a scalable benefit structure to support each profile
- Designed a flexible assignment framework of four scalable and agile international assignment policy types, successfully replacing the legacy one-size-fits-all policies
- Produced a projected annual savings of up to $200,000 USD through reduction of exceptions and expectation management
- Produced a projected annual decrease in assignment costs of up to 20% for some assignment types through scalable flexible benefits
- Estimated improvement of customer satisfaction scores due to the agility of the assignment budget, as well as wider diversity appeal to future mobile employees
- Provided deliverables in the form of benchmarks, workshops, and read-out reports which served as the foundation for a business case to present to senior management which aligned mobility more closely with talent, career, and workforce planning
While many organizations are contemplating embarking on a transformation of their mobility function, it can be a challenge to build consensus. We have observed better results where foundations to transformation are developed early and collaboratively, ensuring internal support, diverse and innovative solutions, and inspiring motivation for the change. The structured and guided approach taken by this client was critical to creating tailored solutions, determining internal and external enablers, identifying possible obstacles, and defining a solid future opportunity for growth.
BGRS delivered tailored industry research, shared wider market insights, facilitated targeted collaborative exercises and a focused, consensus driven action plan.
BGRS was able to provide tailored industry research, share wider market insights, facilitate targeted collaborative exercises, and enable an actionable, consensus driven plan. Both parties ensured that the format and structure of the project was aligned both to the organization’s objectives and to a practical action plan with tangible outcomes. This included a robust transformation business case to present to senior leadership, targeted towards a more accessible, experience-focused, and agile future state with mobility as a strategic partner to the broader organization.