Caitlin Pyett, Director of Account Management,Asia and Consulting Lead at Crown World Mobility
Measuring the financial benefits, impact, and return on investment, of any assignment is important for mobility teams today. Human-centricity aside, you may need to justify sending employees on future assignments when budgets are being reviewed for a new financial year, or highlight the positive impact they have on team performance to managers, when looking to assemble a new round of candidates to send away.
There have been been findings to suggest that offering relocation to employees improves factors such as productivity, retention, and engagement – as evidenced in our 2023 Mobility Matters report. This puts it up there with the likes of flexible working and ‘workations’ as an offering that delivers solid ROI and business performance.
However, that’s only part of the picture. How can mobility teams measure the full range of benefits relocation has to offer their business, when so many them are seemingly ‘intangible’ in nature?
The intangible benefits of relocation
Some of the intangible benefits of relocation can’t be defined on the balance sheet. While it can be fairly straightforward to define and measure tangible benefits – like the ones listed above – their intangible counterparts present more of a challenge. Yet, it is often these factors which determine the impact of the assignment and whether it can be considered a success.
These subjective and intangible benefits include the cultural intelligence that the assignee has gained from the time spent away from home and the growth of their international mindset. Their experience of diversity, their resilience, problem-solving and creativity in the face of issues are also classified as such, as is their enhanced motivation and wellbeing.
All these factors feed into the ‘human-centric’ approach to mobility that was discussed in our previous blog. However, there is often a preference to measure the success of an assignment based on more tangible and objective elements, because of their quantifiability. To ignore the subjective and intangible, though, is to ignore a significant area of mobility’s benefits. Any analysis of the ROI of global mobility must therefore include both elements, and take into account the full picture.
Digital tools can add some value here. An end-to-end mobility management platform, for example, can provide managers and their assignee population with detailed, intuitive dashboards that allow them to exchange data and documentation pertaining to their assignments. These platforms can help with gathering functional, tangible inputs, such as immigration documents and financial paperwork. However, they can also contribute towards measuring those holistic, intangible benefits, such as data from employee satisfaction surveys, or cultural integration milestones. Having all of this data in one place, via a mobility management platform, acts as a single source of truth for mobility managers, providing them with a ‘bigger picture’ overview of the benefits of their mobility programmes.
Using goals to measure the intangible
ROI can also be measured by whether or not assignment goals are met. As well as those related to the performance of and expectations on the employee, goals can also address softer skills that enable integration into a team, comprehension of cultural understanding – measured at the beginning and the end of the assignment – or global mindset. Moving to another country is undoubtedly a tumultuous experience, and attaining these different types of goals can enable a healthier resilience and flexibility to their new surroundings for the assignee.
Companies care about the impact of these soft skills because they are seen as being critical to productivity. Some business areas that are likely to benefit from these intangible benefits are access to global talent pools, cultural awareness, and even innovation. The Crown Engage platform also helps track these kinds of goals through customisable widgets and configurable dashboards, allowing HR teams to set up pulse surveys to track employee sentiment or collect feedback on cross-cultural integration and team dynamics.
A successful assignee is one who is flexible and shows emotional agility while potentially working their way through a period of ambiguous flux. Building their personal networks and increasing their visibility as they identify mentors and buddy relationships are all key to creating effective, multicultural teams that benefit from 360° feedback.
