Global Assignment Policies & Practices Survey Report

Organizations continue to offer greater flexibility in their talent mobility policy approaches — developing policy frameworks that are aligned to overarching talent and business development objectives. Fifty two percent of survey participants cite including core versus flexible provisions, followed by an observable trend of (18 percent) of participants beginning to adopt a cafeteria/menu/points-based approach expanding the range of choices for either the assignee or the business. Enabling choice for mobile employees to develop assignment and transfer packages best suited to their personal needs is on the rise. Enhancing overall employee experience is a critical factor for attracting, engaging, developing, and retaining key talent globally.

Organizations continue to adopt more purposeful approaches to mobilizing talent globally by strengthening the connections between talent management and global mobility functions. During 2022, 71 percent of survey participants ranked supporting overall business and talent development objectives as a top program goal for their international assignments.

Global talent mobility is too complex and important to employees and the organization to leave up to chance. Survey participants are particularly interested in solutions for producing assignment cost projections, automating assignment initiations, and creating supporting documents for assignments and transfers. Further, organizations are seeking fully integrated, ‘single source of data truth’ technology solutions (often with their external service partners) that span the whole spectrum of talent mobility and provides self-service options for employees via online portals and mobile technology solutions integrated with mobility phase processes.

Fast-moving organizations do not want to be bogged down in transactions and typically outsource high-volume complex transactions like individual tax compliance. Survey participants outsource relocation management services (82 percent), destination services (70 percent), tax consulting (91 percent), tax return preparation (89 percent), and immigration (84 percent), so they can focus on providing a superb employee experience, participate in strategic talent planning and future workforce shaping, and demonstrate a return on investment for their organizations including successful assignment completions and post assignment retention against employee mobility spend.

Emerging from the recent global pandemic, many workers, especially those in professional services, still favor working remotely at least part of the time. According to KPMG’s 2022 Global CEO Outlook survey, CEO’s are changing how they support and attract talent, and their efforts are buoyed by a focus on their people and continuing to experiment with ways of working. In the long term, the employee value proposition to attract and retain the necessary talent is tied as the top operational priority to achieving 3-year growth objectives. While remote working has had a positive impact on hiring, collaboration and productivity over the past 2 years, 65 percent of CEOs see in-office as the go-to office environment over the next 3 years.