Mobility and generations

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How do the companies should encourage the mobility of their talented people while it appears many of them are struggling to manage generations (X, Y, Z, Millenials) meaning different kind of interests and motivations? Why we have not been able to come up with a best practice yet?

Armando Leyva
78 months ago

4 answers

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Hi Armando....thanks for a good question. First of all I beleive it is going to be difficult to come up with a best practice for mobility of talented people. We can only base our future practices based on the past be it for generation X, Y or millenials. Based on my experience having dealt with mobility, the fundamental issue has always being "What happens to me should I take up this assignment overseas for a period of time. Initially many wanted to go for overseas assignement because they were all tax protected, in the sense that if they move from a high tax regime country to a lesser tax regime country they get to pocket the difference so it was beneficial for them to take up such assigments. After the Asian economic crisis, companies started moving from a tax protection to tax equalisation meaning that no matters which economy they came from they will still be taxed as though they were back home. These did not incentivise them to take any more overseas assignment especailly with no guranteed that they will have an assignment back home.
More so with generation x, y and millenials, I beleive they will only make themselves mobile should there be a guranteed from the organisation that the original jobs they were doing will be assured after their mobility period. The newer generation always want to know, what's in for them. Assurances of better pay, exposure etc are only short term as their interests especially in the Digital age is different.
Until and unless a very structured process of their career path is clearly defined and shown to them, it is going to be a hard sell. Having said that I also beleive that not all the x, y and millenials are similar. So the challenge would be to seek out the people who want to see a change in the career and life and challenge them to be mobile. Try to target employees who are 2 or levels below and get them on a accelerated path and ready for mobilty.
Hope this helps.

Bernard Cruz
78 months ago
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Global Mobility is need of MNCs for their growth. More importantly it is required to ensure knowledge sharing and promoting diversity in the organisation. Due to personal issues or social bondings, generally people resist such mobility. To overcome these issues and to encourage employee to come forward for this, we did the following in a company I was associated with: 1. Inter-Cultural Training in advance; 2. Better Incentives and pay and perks on such assignments including family accomodation and travel; 3. Mentorship by the executive who had earlier been to that assdignment in the country concerned; 4. Periodic Communications to make employees realise the benefits of such mobility for their and companiy's growth; 5. Help such employee overcome language barriers particularly from/to Non_English speaking countries.

Dr Som Saini, FAHRI
78 months ago
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Excellent and valuable input from both Bernard Cruz and Dr. Som Saini.
I would add that we need to be stronger on helping the accompanying spouse finding a job, education or meaning with the transfer.
We see an increase in 'two career' family transfer and 'female talent transfer' (often leaving it up to the male partner to find a new job abroad).
We, therefore, need to have a more holistic approach to transfer talented employees and their accompanying spouse.

Lena Beck Roervig
78 months ago
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You have a point! Indeed we should focus on the family members not just on the employee alone. Helping him/her with opportunities on neighborhood, schools and other facilities for the whole familiy will allow to speed up the landing of that person to start focusing on the job contributions.

Armando Leyva
78 months ago
When an employee lands in a new country of posting with family where he does not know many and family needs being above his official commitments, helping settling his family in new place will go a long way in winning support of the family for such a call. This will surely save lot of efforts and time of the employee enabling him to focus on his official responsibilities. - Dr Som 78 months ago

Have some input?