This piece was originally featured on HR in Asia.
Speaking about challenges to Talent Mobility in different markets across the globe, Brynne Herbert, CEO, MOVE Guides firmly believes in automating process being the key to help companies save money, ensure smoother workflows and have a happy productive workforce.
Read the full interview with HR in Asia below.
- Please share more information about the MOVE Guides talent mobility cloud platform and how it helps resolve HR challenges in the APAC markets?
Moving abroad can be extremely stressful, Different time zones make communication between global offices difficult and companies need workers focused and ready to work. However, workers get distracted by making sure their belongings are delivered, finding a place to live, opening a bank account, or getting set up with health providers. Meanwhile, HR personnel in the home office are spinning to gather information from countries or cities they don’t know.
Few companies do talent mobility well. PwC research has found that 9% of global organisations measure the return on investment from mobility. Recently, research we conducted with the RES Forum found that, of 80 leading companies, only 18% had talent mobility programs that met their expectations.
Our Talent Mobility Cloud brings together companies, employees and global vendors (shipping, real estate, immigration, financial and more). This enables companies and employees to have instant access to all the information and data involved in a move.
With the cloud, the information is accessible 24/7, which makes for better and more efficient information sharing. MOVE Guides’ customers have experienced up to a 30% bump in efficiency for HR teams and 99% employee satisfaction.
MOVE Guides’ SaaS technology works with companies who outsource their mobility programs and with those who manage it in house. MOVE Guides also pairs the Talent Mobility Cloud with support for employees from their dedicated MOVE Advocate team.
- Does MOVE Guides hold strong presence and reliability in the APAC region? If yes, do feel free to share some of your prominent experiences working with the Asian counterparts.
MOVE Guides has a rapidly growing presence in the APAC region. Last year, we opened our first APAC offices in Hong Kong to support our existing customers as they expand into new markets. This year, the Forum Expatriate Management in APAC nominated us for Relocation Company of the Year and Most Innovative Use of Technology in Global Mobility.
- How is the talent mobility platform from MOVE Guides different from the competition cloud services provided?
MOVE Guides’ primary focus is on bringing down the costs and integration requirements to automate processes in talent mobility. We centralize cost data so it is easier to forecast, track, analyze and share.
Companies save money by automating this process, have happier and more productive employees and smoother workflows. We also have a talented engineering and product team on premise that is dedicated to creating the best platform for talent mobility management.
- Tell us how MOVE Guides helps HR personnel and companies address the relocation challenges in employee management?
Our recent survey with RES Forum shows that 25% of companies stated talent mobility was the most time consuming and complex of all of their HR functions.
MOVE Guides helps HR move away from using email and Excel to manage their mobility program. Our survey indicated that 40% of companies still relied on them as core program management tools. Excel and email are far too manual, prone to error and fragmented for the increasing complexities of modern mobility.
One move of an employee and their family on an international assignment may involve payments to 15 companies or people. If a company is handling the move, the process will typically involve 10 people from a host of different departments. If employees are given a lump sum to move, dozens of work hours can be lost.
With cloud-based technology and automation tools, companies and HR departments can more easily track costs and vendor performance, inform employees of options and the status of their moves and track compliance with company policies. This frees HR personnel to work on other things.
- Addressing the issue of global workforce management, what are the initiatives taken by MOVE Guides towards empowering HR with seamless relocation programs to recruit and retain the best talent?
We constantly educate companies about the benefit of having seamless relocation programs to recruit and retain talent. We see smart companies using mobility to fill skill gaps and to build leaders of tomorrow, whether that is an APAC-located worker moving to the United States or vice versa.
What’s more, Millennials—the dominating generation of the workforce—expect more flexibility, learning and development and many of them expect to live and work abroad at some point. Employees will grade a company’s worthiness at every juncture of their careers.
This will include whether the company has made possible a state-of-the-art relocation experience, and whether it embraces mobility, which enhances employee engagement, to reach its goals.
Those companies who will excel in an increasingly global economy will be able to move global talent at a moment’s notice, and then retain and develop that talent.
- How can MOVE Guides talent mobility cloud platform help HR personnel across different markets collaborate and work in tandem to boost organisational effectiveness and goals?
The cloud makes it possible to have all the information related to someone’s move in one place, accessible whenever. This will enable HR workers in any time zone to get immediate and real-time updates on the status of a move, vendor performance and changes in compliance policies, etc.
It is so much more efficient to have one place for HR to gather and disseminate data than to rely on email chains that may be moot by the time an HR worker logs on in another time zone.
- Compliance is one major challenge as we see for HR professionals in different industries, across markets. How does this talent mobility platform address the compliance issues of organisations across different industries?
By centralising vendors and operations, MOVE Guides minimises compliance risk for companies. Companies have full visibility into the global spend and can track tax and immigration information in one place.
- Which are the main sectors wherein the talent mobility platform has been successfully deployed, besides, of course, technology companies staying ahead of the trends?
We have customers in many industries, including retail, media, financial services, and manufacturing. Those that have shifted their legacy processes into the cloud are already reaping the benefits.
For example, Société Générale, one of the largest financial services organizations in Europe, recently partnered with MOVE Guides. The company wanted to leverage its international experience and innovative technology to manage its full mobility program more efficiently.
Before using MOVE Guides, the company had no visibility of total costs per move. HR and financial processes were manual and fragmented. That often resulted in complicated internal recharging, invoicing and expenses. Today, Société Générale’s teams have streamlined time-consuming processes, consolidated reporting, simplified payments and enhanced the employee experience.
- Do you think HR professionals across many other industries such as hospitality, healthcare, etc. are embracing cloud in a big way? If not, explain reasons for reluctance toward embracing HR cloud in different industries.
All companies looking to succeed as a 21st century organization know that their futures are tied to the cloud. By adopting cloud technology for day-to-day operations, companies are simplifying and automating HR processes, in whatever industry they are in.
That said, there are common reluctances we see from Company’s IT departments sceptical over the security of cloud. That is why it is important to work with IT departments to demonstrate the security of the platform, which is ultimately much more secure than what is probably happening, i.e. emails, spreadsheets, and data going over insecure mediums.
- Harnessing the power of HR analytics and big data, how can a successful talent mobility program be implemented by companies? How does this improve cost-efficiency and help achieve transparency of operation when it comes to moving talent?
Companies first have to know how and where they are spending their talent mobility dollars before they can achieve cost effectiveness. The centralisation of information into a cloud-based platform improves company access to their data and allows them to apply data analytics as to how, when and why they’re spending.
With that information, companies can make changes. Until they have the data, they will continue to take little more than educated guesses. In our RES Forum survey, 94% of respondents said technology would help them meet business and talent mobility objectives.