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Perspectives

The irresistible mobility experience

Reimagining global mobility and the employee experience

Enhancing the employee experience was voted the #1 strategic priority by mobility professionals. Learn more about our global mobility solutions.

The employee experience landscape

In business, the customer is king. Organizations go out of their way to deliver the best customer experience possible; whether in-store, online, or through an app.

The employee experience, however, is typically very different. Employees are often expected to navigate complex systems and processes. When moving overseas, these can include anything from organizing shipment to completing numerous forms, in the midst of coordinating multiple stakeholders and emotionally preparing to work overseas.

Executives and leaders are struggling to change this dynamic. Enhancing the employee experience was voted the #1 strategic priority by mobility professionals1 and 80 percent of executives rated employee experience as very important, but only 22 percent were excellent at building a differentiated employee experience. Only 23 percent of companies feel that they are excellent at helping employees balance personal and professional life/work demands. Only 24 percent of companies feel that they are excellent in aligning employee and personal goals with corporate purpose.2

But what if you could deliver a mobility experience that feels more like a world class customer experience? An experience in which employees can more easily interact, access information, review options, and take action.

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The irresistible mobility experience

The rules of engagement are changing

In a digital world with increasing transparency and the growing influence of the workforce being comprised of five generations of workers, employees expect a positive work experience, with the following factors driving engagement levels:

  • Meaningful work
  • Supportive management
  • Positive work environment
  • Growth opportunity
  • Trust in Leadership

Organizations are realizing the significance of positive and consistent employee experience, against the backdrop of operating in a highly competitive global economy.

Research shows a clear correlation between employee experience, customer experience, and business outcomes3. Improving employee experience can help:

  • To attract and retain talented employees
  • To create a positive working environment which empowers employees
  • To reduce rates of absenteeism & presenteeism, and improve customer service
  • To keep employees engaged with the business
  • To help employees reach their full potential, and attain peak performance & productivity
  • To achieve better customer service and financial outcomes

In response to these changing dynamics, leading organizations are now developing an integrated focus on the experience for the entire workforce.

Equally, for mobile employees, this means shifting from a reactive, one size fits all approach to a proactive, personalized approach which creates human value.

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The global mobility journey

Be it an overseas business trip, a fixed-term assignment or a permanent move, relocation can be exciting, but also challenging and emotionally demanding. It may provide new opportunities, but also cause increased levels of stress.

From adapting to a foreign culture and integrating into a new work environment, to the pressure placed on relationships and families, research indicates that an individual’s emotional wellbeing fluctuates extensively across their relocation journey.

Coupled with the increased administration involved for the individual in organizing an international move, employers face a considerable challenge in creating a positive experience for mobile employees.

With this in mind, it is perhaps unsurprising that employee willingness is considered the number one barrier to managing a global workforce4.

Placing the user at the center of mobility

We believe the employee experience should be irresistible even when someone moves internationally.

What drives a positive mobility experience will differ at each organization and will be impacted by the business strategy, sensitivities to cost, speed and efficiency. It is, however, essential that the experience meets the needs of the user, taking into account different demographics and deployment types.

The irresistible mobility experience balances a human-centered approach with the strategy and culture of the organization, curating the mobility journey around the employee’s needs to deliver a consistent and high-quality experience.

Taking steps which make a tangible and human impact on the mobility experience can significantly enhance the mobility brand, acting as a role model for the wider organization's employee experience initiatives.

Imagine if your employees said:

Moving abroad was a big, emotional decision not only for me but also for my family. From being a dual income family, we became a single income family as my wife had to quit her job. I felt that my company’s mobility program took all of these factors into account and we had the support we needed to successfully transition.

I like to be in control of my financial affairs but moving internationally made this more challenging, so I relied heavily on the organization’s vendors to support me with my knowledge gaps. My mobility contacts always provided me with clear, timely and concise communications to keep me informed. Having a simple user interface helped to reduce the administrative burden on my part.

A good experience includes support to deal with different cultural sensitivities. My move was difficult due to my sexual orientation so I’m grateful that I had a mobility advisor to guide me and my spouse through the process.

My mobility experience was great because I always had clarity on the scope of support provided by the employer and a single point of contact or a single point of entry to access all of my relocation information.

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Where to get started

  1. Identify the mobility experience challenges by considering the possible pain points, in the end, to end user journey, e.g. employees feel overwhelmed with the volume of administration involved with their moves.
  2. Listen to the voice of every mobility user, including employees, service providers, and business leaders, to gain a more in-depth understanding as to the current service.
  3. Analyze the existing experience by reviewing any available data on your mobile employees.
  4. Focus efforts on the parts of the mobility journey which will have the biggest impact on the overall experience.
  5. Create tailored solutions that are desirable to employees, financially viable, and organizationally feasible.

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On-going measurement

Developing an effective means of measuring the mobility experience is essential; to help establish the challenges in the existing service, and to validate that any recent enhancements have in fact improved the employee experience.

There are four key areas which organizations may find important to measure:

A broad-based and targeted mobility data set can help organizations to stay ahead of the curve, understand the factors influencing the success of international deployments and make real-time interventions to improve the mobility experience.

As well as considering the scope and depth of topics to measure, leading organizations are also considering how often they look to collate data from employees and the best mechanisms for doing so. This could mean a move away from retrospective pulse surveys assessments, to a real-time app-based solution or cutting edge wearable technology.

These innovative approaches may allow employees to provide instant feedback on their mobility experience, through a simple user interface, and with an automated triage of specific issues to the correct contact.

Each organization's approach to mobility experience measurement may be different, taking into account culture and other existing measurement mechanisms already in place across the wider organization.

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Our approach

At Deloitte, we believe in a problem-solving philosophy that focuses on people, to create offerings that are intuitive and deliver value. Our approach leverages our global mobility experience and our design thinking methodology to help our clients cultivate an irresistible mobility experience.

This human-centered, collaborative approach is creative, iterative and practical. By gathering evidence through research, combined with empathy and experimentation, we help our clients create a holistic understanding of the current service and experience.

This enables organizations to identify opportunities to create engaging experiences for mobile employees, which make a real human impact on the mobility experience. Cultivating this ‘service vision’ gives real purpose and focus to the mobility program.

The following four principles are key to our approach:

Our experience tells us that this design-led approach is a productive and innovative way of creating seamless mobility experiences to achieve meaningful results.

The first step is to establish a shared understanding of the current context and identify opportunities to resolve key challenges. Typically we work on this together with our clients as part of an interactive and immersive mobility experience lab.

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About Deloitte

Deloitte’s market-leading Digital Workforce | Mobility team engages with organizations to establish global workforce strategies, tailored to client specific business and talent objectives. We have vast experience in collaborating with organizations to enhance, reshape and transform both the operational and strategic aspects of mobility and talent programs.

We embrace design thinking to help clients to reimagine their approach to talent mobility, focusing on areas ranging from policy and process design, service delivery model transformation, program effectiveness measurement, customer experience enhancement, global talent strategy, digital planning, and workforce analytics.

Our multi-disciplinary team of over 250 global professionals specializes in transformation, analytics, and technology. Our approach and design-led mindset bring industry-specific and functional knowledge, as well as data-driven insights and innovative technology solutions.

We have a proven track record of delivering complex projects and providing unrivaled thought leadership.

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Endnotes

1 2018 Deloitte Future of Mobility survey
2 2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report
3 Building Business Value with Employee Experience, MIT Cisr research briefing (2017)
4 2018 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report

Let's talk

Karin Angvald-Wallach
Managing Director | National Global Employer Services
Deloitte Tax LLP
kangvaldwallach@deloitte.com
+1 212 436 4769

Shannon Anderson-Finch
Senior Manager | National Global Employer Services
Deloitte Tax LLP
sfinch@deloitte.com
+1 512 226 4642

Michelle Fertig
Senior Manager | National Global Employer Services
Deloitte Tax LLP
mfertig@deloitte.com
+1 212 492 4025

Aimee Obaldo
Manager | National Global Employer Services
Deloitte Tax LLP
aobaldo@deloitte.com
+1 212 653 7852

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