By Kim Sang-yeoul

One life sciences company’s global mobility function was drawing criticism from both business managers and international assignees for unsatisfactory service. Business managers felt that they lacked guidance on how to effectively select assignees, plan assignments and choose assignment policies.

Many assignees reported that in the initial conversations about assignment, expectations had not been appropriately set regarding the impact of the assignment on themselves and their families. Upon investigation, the company found that the global mobility function was spending almost all of its time coordinating assignee services, with very little effort going toward offering business managers the advice they needed. Further, the global mobility function was often not even notified about assignments until the assignment was planned, the candidate selected and expectations already established.

The company realized that many of the coordinating activities that were being performed in the global mobility function could actually be done more effectively elsewhere. For instance, certain administrative tasks, including the recharging of assignment costs, could easily be taken over by resources in the company’s HR and finance shared services organization (SSO). This would not only free up global mobility function staff to focus on advising the business and counseling assignees, but also improve administrative service delivery quality: The HR and finance professionals in the company’s SSO would bring function-specific skills to their tasks that global mobility staff had historically lacked.

It reorganized roles and responsibilities in the global mobility function and its SSO to move a number of transactional HR and finance activities to SSO staff. In addition, leaders hired outside vendors to perform some specialized activities formerly housed in the global mobility function.

Meanwhile, to address the business’s needs for global mobility advisory services, several global mobility staff were reassigned to business support roles that would work with business managers and HR personnel to plan and help manage assignments from a strategic perspective. And the firm redefined the global mobility director’s role as an “ambassador for international assignments,” focused on educating and communicating with business leaders about global mobility and driving program innovation