Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of WERC.
WERC, the global community for talent mobility, recently concluded one of its most successful Global Workforce Symposiums (GWS) ever. Hosted in National Harbor, Maryland, near Washington, D.C., GWS 2024 inspired the attendance of over 1,450 talent mobility professionals, with over 450 employer organizations and a record-breaking 300+ first-time attendees joining together for networking and exchange of insights and knowledge at over 40 sessions, labs, and roundtables, as well as informal and essential gatherings in the Exhibit Hall and throughout the conference venue. The content and the energy of the conference reinforced the purpose and value of the WERC community and talent mobility overall.
In a series of articles over the next few months, we’ll profile some key topics that captured the spirit and momentum of the global talent mobility community at the conference. The areas of focus in these articles will be innovation and artificial intelligence; the customer experience; the evolution of the global mobility role; and, in this first article, talent mobility and value creation.
The Professional Organization for Workforce Mobility
Anupam Singhal, the president and CEO of WERC, opened the conference with a high-energy introduction of the association as “the organization for talent mobility by talent mobility professionals,” with a mission to provide value to every member, every day. In his first year as CEO, Singhal has connected with thousands of WERC members, and he sees in real time how the skills of the membership are being harnessed in new ways for the industry and for the businesses that build enterprise value through the contributions of the talent they attract, develop, mobilize, and retain.
Singhal and the WERC Board of Directors are encouraging our membership to think about talent mobility more strategically with the recognition that talent is key to value creation and is one of the most underleveraged tools a company has available to drive growth and build value for stakeholders, from investors, to clients and customers, to owner/operators and associates, to suppliers and partners, and for the local communities where we live and work.
The message is as exciting as it is straightforward: the more all members, in their respective roles of expertise, can unite behind the WERC purpose of education, network, and advocacy, the stronger the story we can tell about how we impact talent deployment for business success. As the products, services, and benefits being offered to the mobile workforce become more differentiated, there has never been a greater need to not only manage the logistics of mobility but to guide talent in the process and inform the decision-makers who expect to understand the implications of their investment decisions. A key focus of WERC is to use data to demonstrate the measurable return on talent mobility investment and the risk incurred when benefits are unaligned with requirements and support services are unaligned with needs and professional guidance.
Singhal laid out a vision that the board has endorsed for WERC that will support this vision of providing the tools and connecting the people who can elevate talent mobility. From a greater number of global mini summits to streamlined committees leveraging the expertise of 250 industry experts as volunteers, to more energetic conference design, and more focused public policy advocacy on issues that enable more mobility with less friction, and an upcoming economic impact analysis on the power of global mobility, WERC is getting out the message that talent everywhere is opportunity everywhere.
Embrace the Complexity, and Solutions Come into Focus
The opening session’s focus on seizing the moment and pushing the talent agenda was powerfully reinforced by a conversation between Singhal and the keynote speaker at GWS, José Andrés, renowned restaurateur, and the driving force behind World Central Kitchen. Telling his remarkable story that began with travels in the Spanish Navy and a decision to move to New York City, Andrés provided numerous examples of embracing complexity and not waiting for perfect solutions in order to make progress on immediate needs and opportunities.
In the restaurant business and in the massively complex business of feeding thousands of people in countries devastated by conflicts and natural disasters, his message was to embrace the complexity. The solutions come into focus and the chaos comes under control. The secret, of course, is in trusting and leveraging your talent. As he noted, if you can buy rice in New York, you can buy rice in Gaza; if you can find trucks in Ukraine, you can find them in Florida. The knowledge is borderless—what’s needed are creative, committed people who are all in on solutions that can be rapidly deployed and rapidly adapted
Listening to Andrés talk, the parallels to global workforce mobility became clear. If you don’t have the right talent at the right time, you lose the moment of impact. Among the many essential takeaway messages he shared were the statements, “Don’t solve the wrong problem” and “Immigration is not a problem to solve, but an opportunity to seize.”
This theme of lifting the value of talent contribution from process management and control to advocating for talent as the source of innovation and expansion was picked up throughout the conference sessions and conversations.
What Can We Influence vs. What Can We Control
Pivoting from the inspiring story of Andrés’s global enterprise and the humanitarian impact of World Central Kitchen, the opening general session at GWS concluded with a candid and enlightening discussion of industry trends from the perspective of five key leaders: Chad Sterling at Altair Global, Joleen Lauffer at Aires, Matt Tebbe at Cartus, Bob Olmsted at SIRVA, and Dave Bencivengo at Weichert Workforce Mobility. Together their companies manage mobility for a large proportion of global Fortune 1000 employers as well as hundreds of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Singhal set the stage with a recap of the macro-factors impacting global mobility and the fact they were largely out of the control of our industry’s practitioners. The government stimulus payments and supply chain shortages of the global pandemic led to higher rates of inflation, including the cost of real estate and rentals and mobility-related services like transportation. Central banks raised interest rates, and with an increased cost of capital, businesses dramatically slowed down their investments and focused their efforts on cost control. Mobility seized up in 2023 and much of 2024 after runaway volume and activity in 2022. But talent is still needed everywhere, so what are the solutions? The panel had multiple perspectives to share, including:
- An expected pickup in investment that will drive related talent mobility in 2025
- A growing degree of comfort with “new ways” of mobility, such as remote assignments and expanded use of extended business travel
- Expansion in mobility populations such as group moves, intern programs, and new markets
- Contraction in traditional services like household goods moves, opening up opportunities for product and service innovation in this vertical and others
- Evidence that companies are rebuilding their talent infrastructure, with more “field” assignments and fewer moves to headquarters
- Ongoing awareness of the changing dynamics of who is moving and what they need
- Expanded expectations for information, analysis, and a “single pane of glass” to manage mobility
- Exploring how relocation program management costs will be paid for with a potential downshift in the home sale revenues that have historically subsidized other services
Regarding trends we have been watching in the industry for some time, these business leaders had a range of commentary. Tebbe at Cartus mentioned there is always a high level of corporate client inquiry about lump-sum solutions but ultimately less adoption of lump sum as standard practice. Industrywide, there is no arguing the need that service experiences need to be both simpler and more technology-enabled, but it’s equally true that talent does not benefit from only fewer and shorter services if they feel under-supported by the process. The general consensus was the need for more information about the expectations and satisfaction levels of an emerging class of talent mobility beneficiaries.
Lauffer at Aires reminded us that all employers and suppliers have a duty-of-care obligation. Pushing down on the “cork” of cost control could mean greater risk “bobbing up” elsewhere in the talent mobility experience. And regarding the adoption of AI and other appropriate technology, Bencivengo at Weichert advised, “Update and improve your operational processes first, before you automate them” and Sterling at Altair seconded those thoughts with recommendations for staged AI implementation. “The first use cases will be simplified answers to frequently asked questions while we all level up our talent for new service expectations. We need to stay focused on people going through a complex and disruptive process who need help.”
Summarizing the current state of the talent mobility ecosystem, Olmsted at SIRVA commented on the dynamic environment and the need to “talk more, collaborate, and be stronger together.” In this environment of change and opportunity, the alignment between who the employer is moving and the solutions required from partners has never been greater. Historic patterns are changing will not necessarily be the default solutions going forward. A focus on talent first is key to aligning services, expectations, and cost and fee models.
The ROI of Talent Mobility
The talent focus at GWS 2024 was book-ended on the closing day of the conference with a session called “Got Talent? Refocusing on Getting the Right People to the Right Places at the Right Time” that was a call to action to our industry. Hosted by Bob Rosing of Dwellworks with panelists Emerson Ross from Walmart, Sophy King from Envoy Global, Ron Dunlap at Graebel, and Singhal, the discussion was a powerful reminder of the opportunity all of us in global mobility have to secure and support the talent that is responsible for driving business enterprise growth and value.
The panelists guided us through a need to shift our focus exclusively from transactional and logistical expertise and incremental cost reduction (that could ultimately be harmful to strategic goals) and instead use our professional competencies to convincingly make the return on investment argument that aligns talent strategy, talent mobility, and value creation.
In a world where high-performance talent remains in demand, are we facilitating effective immigration as well as the other benefits that our talent has told us they value—benefits that help them not only accomplish relocation-related tasks but expedite their connection and effective settling-in to their new roles and locations? Over 40% of relocations and assignments are declined or ended early for lack of paying attention to talent-defined needs. Solving for those needs requires purposeful, often small investments, amounting to an expense equal to less than one-half of one percent of a company’s overall annual revenue but having an outsourced return on growth and value creation, given that mobile talent is also high potential, high-performance talent that a company is counting on to lead initiatives, launch businesses, and expand market share.
As Rosing said, “Let’s not cluster around kicking the soccer ball when we can be focused on moving down the field and winning the game.” With timely illustrations of solutions that responded to specific needs and made the point that customer-defined needs are not exceptions, but opportunities to secure talent, this session closed on a high note of the value creation made possible through alignment among all the expertise represented by WERC.
WERC premium members can access GWS session recordings in the Learning Portal.