Solve your biggest Mobility Challenges in One Afternoon
By: Tim O’Shea, Vice President of Worldwide Consulting Services
Relocation, expansion, and pursuing new market opportunities are key to the growth of global companies. Mobility is essential to the mission. But key leaders don’t always see it that way.
Have you ever felt like many in your company just don’t see Mobility’s strategic value?
Mobility programmes often find themselves as delivering costly transactions rather than adding real business value. In fact, during a recent Strategy session at the annual insideMOBILITY® Summit in Munich, 44% of the Mobility professionals representing 17 leading companies said cost is their greatest area of concern regarding international policies.
But, focusing only on reducing the cost of Mobility is like looking through the wrong end on the telescope. Proving its value is the untapped path to success.
This year, we’ve logged more than a few frequent flier miles spreading this message. Through workshops and one-one-one sessions, we are helping programmes elevate Mobility’s role and effectiveness. And, equipping Mobility departments with action plans designed to grow their influence. We’re guiding people through a proven process that maps their programme’s strategy onto a single page – with a tool that helps Mobility departments align with corporate goals, define expectations, and begin measuring success.
I moderated a Mobility Strategy workshop recently in Munich, where I challenged attendees to think of Mobility as more than a set of policies or operations. This exercise, with its accompanying toolset, is the key to becoming “a partner in building a unified definition of success based on a shared assumption.” I shared with them the idea that transaction accountability will never go away but that you can manage both the operational and create and enhance the mission and strategy of the programme. The time for “earning” the right to be strategic through operational perfection is over – now’s the time to do both with equal effort and passion.
Sound like just a lot of theory?
I met with the entire mobility team at a fortune 500 healthcare information technology company where they shared that Mobility was perceived as an expensive division that did little to develop internal talent. That was a real problem – considering the company employed nearly 30,000 associates in more than 25 countries. Working with Graebel, the organisation was able to create a Mobility Mission that linked its role to programme success and sparked a renewed focus on associate development as well as gave them a new perspective how success is measured.
In another session, an S&P 500 technology company worked closely with Graebel to align talent development with overall corporate strategies to develop more proactive, efficient and productive employee relocations.
Of course, one of the greatest challenges Mobility managers face is getting the attention of their stakeholder peers in the first place. 51% of Mobility professionals at the 2018 insideMOBILITY® Summits in Denver and Munich report it as a big challenge (n=55). The secret lies in defining your potential audiences very clearly, revealing opportunities for engaged relationships. This too is a focus of the Strategy sessions we’ve been conducting.
Best of all, the catalytic step can be completed in a single afternoon. Seriously, it’s been done, and it’s painless! Listen to three people who have been through the programme in this short video.
One client remarked to me, “I’ve never accomplished so much in a two-hour meeting when it comes to strategy. This is the best workshop I’ve been to.”
The pathway to success has never been so clear. Or time efficient. This Strategy tool is just the first step in a programme that we’re calling the Graebel Mobility PathBuilderSM. Contact me or your Graebel representative and get started today.