Welcome to this month’s newsletter.
This month we cover:
- Our big launch!
- Choosing the right technology solutions
- Product updates
- Current trends
- Mel’s tip of the day
The big day arrived: the launch of our work from anywhere platform!
After 2 years of development and having spoken with over 300 companies around the world, we were thrilled with the launch of our work from anywhere platform.
We are immensely grateful to everyone around the world who helped provide valuable feedback to us to help us get here.
What is our vision behind this platform? For us, it’s very simple. We want to help global mobility teams save time and money.
How?
By automating most of the cumbersome research around hire from anywhere.
For example: How do I hire a developer in India, is it via an Employer of Record or by setting up a legal entity?
And with work from anywhere e.g. can my US employee use the Barbados digital nomad visa to work there for a few months.
Are you interested in seeing it in action?
Click on the button below to get access to a free 7 day trial for you or anyone in your team for that matter.
Not quite the right time for you to implement new technology?
No problem, but if you do feel like sharing what we’re doing with others, we’d hugely appreciate you letting others in your network know.
How do you choose the right international remote work technology solution?
The idea for this article came from the publication of the recent Global Mobility Executive report on global mobility technology trends. We have also met a lot of global mobility leaders who are struggling to navigate the complexities of the different technology tools out there.
The last 2 years have seen many companies, especially those people in global mobility functions, face considerable challenges and stress. While those leaders weaved their way through the pandemic, they faced innumerable tax, legal and immigration challenges around temporary relocations, remote work requests and other ad hoc global mobility requests.
It has been relentless.
But it’s also fair to say that in this same time period, the role of global mobility has evolved at a rapid pace. Global mobility functions are now much more deeply connected to recruitment and the wider HR functions as companies have accelerated their global hiring plans.
This sense of change and evolution has only been accelerated by innovations such as ChatGPT which has already passed the bar exam, with some people claiming it might render lawyers obsolete. Could it eventually make tax, immigration and employment experts obsolete?
In a recent report by the Global Mobility Executive, it was interesting to note that while 35% of global mobility and HR leaders continue to use excel to manage their programme, 47% are considering changing or implementing a new technology.
Here we take a look at the solutions leading the market.
Product Updates
A video update from our Co-Founder and Head of Product, Donal Brady on some of our latest product releases.
For those of you who have been following our journey, some of the main features we have enhanced in the last few months include:
- Visa & Immigration – we have integrated IATA Timatic to give real time visa, passport and health updates. It’s the same system used when you’re checking in at the airport
- Free 7 day trial – we’ve opened up the platform with access to unlimited searches for 13 popular destination countries
- Policy Customization: Incorporating policy customization into the platform (e.g. customized risk appetite as well as country level hire or work from anywhere limits)
- Business Case: Cost and time savings per scenario search have been implemented (to help bolster the internal business case)
- Countries: 50 countries are now live on the paid version of the platform
Current Trends
“How technology is redrawing the boundaries of the firm” in the Economist is a must-read for anyone seeing the evolution in international talent sourcing and remote work.
Remote work and hire from anywhere was featured heavily during the recent Davos discussions. You can read more here, here and here (bonus take by Charlie Munger here).
”Beat The Crisis” by Mercer focusing on agility in workforce operating models caught our attention, as did ”Location Strategy for a Hybrid Workforce by Gartner.
“In 2023 we’re going to continue to see a bifurcation in the way tax authorities approach international remote work. Barbados embraced remote work and generated $100m+ in tourism revenue for the country since they launched, while Switzerland now allows border workers with France to work up to 40% of working time per year there without consequence for taxation of income.”
“However, many countries are still far behind and have a long way to go to bring their tax laws up to date with the changing nature of work.” You can read this take on the future of remote work by John and other remote work thought leaders in this piece here.
Mel’s Tip: Geo Strategy
Last month we gathered the troops, this month let’s connect with a different group in your organisation…the talent team and let’s talk about Geo-Strategy.
What is Geo-Strategy I hear you say, well I would describe it simply as:
Where you hire and how you hire.
Why is it important to Global Mobility?
One of Global Mobility’s key competencies is compliance and we always want to be ready when a request comes across our desk.
Like “I know we don’t have an entity in Brazil but how can we hire this key talent, they are really critical to the business operations?” or hearing from a line manager “one of my team wants to go and work in Spain for 9 months, I’ve said yes and the C level have approved it”.
Global Mobility’s first reaction…FREEZE…a million scenarios running through our heads all screaming no no no, but these days we are experts in presenting risks and solutions.
So let’s get ahead of this and get the C-Suite talking. Enter the talent partner, they are closest to the hiring needs of the organization:
- What are the key talent objectives for 2023 and 2024
- Where are they looking to source talent this coming year and beyond?
- Are these new countries beyond our corporate footprint?
- Is there an understanding of what the options are, have they mentioned EOR, contractor engagements, setting up new entities?
- What does the talent team know about the expectations of line managers? Are jobs that are in the pipeline location-specific or can anyone apply?
- Same for backfills, are they location specific or can the job be done from anywhere?
- What conversations are they having with the C-suite about remote, location independant or hybrid employment?
- What is the workforce value proposition? Has it addressed any of the above?
Getting your leadership to start talking about Geo-Strategy and having a seat at the table to aid the “how to hire” options to their “where to hire” is key for 2023 and beyond.
P.s. when you get a seat at the table don’t forget to extend the invite to your cross-functional team we mentioned in last month’s tip (“assemble the troops”).
Thanks for tuning in!
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