The Future of Global Mobility with the 3 T’s (Technology, Time and Trust)
A guest post by Eve Duvoy, Global Mobility Manager
Let’s start with the basics: not so long ago, in France, “Global Mobility” was called “International Mobility”, and to work in this function meant managing employees going on an assignment in a foreign country and benefiting from a (more or less broad) range of advantageous measures.
Where does the shift from International Mobility to Global Mobility come from? The term Global Mobility designates a function within “People and Culture” in the corporate world and refers to a larger scope and includes many types of employment abroad: permanent moves, international home office, digital nomads, you name it.
The direct consequence of this is the increasing complexity of managing these new forms of employment. How do we adjust the company’s policies to include them? How do we meet employees’ expectations? How do we manage the associated risks?
What happens is that Global Mobility is trying to keep up with the pace and is rather reacting than anticipating, as so many combinations seem possible now. The function must constantly reinvent itself and find solutions in a fast-evolving world to adjust to the new normal.
And the trend is just beginning; this is the future of Global Mobility, and it has already started.
Let’s look at this Mercer insight, 2025 Talent Mobility Outlook | Mercer. We realise how the profession has evolved in the past few years and will continue to evolve, pushing Global Mobility teams to go through a transformation. “Not only do mobility professionals expect a steady or even increased flow of international moves, but they also need to revise mobility policies, address resource gaps, and continue to enhance employee experiences.” No wonder their workload increases under such conditions.
The conclusions of the EY 2025 Mobility Reimagined Survey | EY – Switzerland are also clearly pointing to the direction of change when they state that:
- Global talent is the new gold
- Generative AI is a game-changer
- The function must evolve or it will fall behind.
This sounds like a clear call for action.
Being a Global Mobility professional myself, I saw the business changing at a fast pace in the last 10 years. I relocated from Paris, France, to Zurich, Switzerland, in September 2024. Since then, I have been doing research on Global Mobility’s challenges and new trends. I have met Global Mobility professionals and attended Global Mobility events.
In my exchanges with Global Mobility Managers, I realised that the sentence that kept coming back was: “for every single case we try to find the best setup”. Global Mobility teams navigate in an environment with many parameters, where no two situations are identical, and where you can forget the one-size-fits-all. The growing need for customized support couldn’t be clearer.
Addressing this need with technology is something worth exploring. At the EY Future of Mobility 2025 event held in Zurich on 26th June 2025, I came across an interesting use case of enhancing Global Mobility Management by leveraging technology. What they did was to “aggregate data from across the mobility ecosystem and surface it directly within [an environment all stakeholders were already familiar with and working with daily,] MS Teams.” All information became available at a glance in just one click away and in a user-friendly, intuitive manner, enhancing both the mobile employee and the corporate user experience. At the same time, it reduced the time spent looking for information and contacts, gathering data, analysing it, and creating dashboards: AI executes while people decide and act based on data.
To tackle the complexity of the new normal, I suggest addressing it with 3-T’s -Technology, Time, and Trust. Let’s go back to the questions asked at the beginning.
Adjusting the Company’s Policies through Technology.
Policies reflect the vision and the orientations of a company and develop guidelines to roll them out. They want to be up-to-date, comprehensive, and detailed; however, we know that too much information kills information. A technology like AI can help refresh the policies by selecting the critical data, and a technology like Generative AI can help shape the messages and provide a reader’s digest of the policies, with concise content and compelling illustrations or data that render the messages more transparent. Technology can also free us from time-consuming administrative tasks, like constantly browsing through folders and subfolders to check the status of a move, so that we can turn to more qualitative and value-creating activities. Precisely the point of the next question.
Meeting Employees’ Expectations with Time.
Time is this precious resource we want to spend with the global talent and their family. Because preparation is key, the more we know about the employee’s context, drivers, and objectives, the better we can support the move. A global talent is very enthusiastic about this 3-year assignment in Malaysia; however, the family has a child with special needs. How do we address that? Next to that, we need to understand the same from HR and business stakeholders to make a successful move for both parties: the business has designed a 5-year strategy to increase presence and sales in 3 countries in Africa, and they have selected a global talent to roll out the strategy. Do HR and the business have a sustainable career plan proposal for the candidate? Is the candidate aligned with the plan? Only by co-constructing with our colleagues and with global talents can we provide the best support and services to all stakeholders involved. We also need to invest time in building relationships with our vendors, to clearly express our expectations and co-build the tailor-made solutions to answer our pain points. That leads us to the third question.
Managing the Associated Risks through Trust.
A network of partners in relocation and compliance topics is a must-have, but even more important is the trust we put in the relationship. We need to be sure that we can rely 100% on our providers, especially in areas like tax, where a mistake can have a substantial negative impact. In Global Mobility, we constantly deal with sensitive information because a move not only implies a professional step in the career but also a change in the private sphere. The information that our external partners come across must be treated with the same ethics and respect as we do internally. They must also be shared securely to avoid any breach of privacy.
Now, if you are a Global Mobility Manager, you may think, “Fine, but where do I start?”
1 – Embrace the Change
It always brings some instability at the beginning, but it pinpoints what can be improved and allows you to be in the driver’s seat.
2 – Upskill in new Technologies like GenAI
If you’re a tech nerd, you’ve already started. Are you not digitally savvy? Do you find new technologies scary? Then you have even more reasons to learn how to use and tame them. Eventually, you will realise how they can be your best personal assistant, and you will be happy to integrate them into your working practices.
3 – Spend Time with and Collect Feedback from Your Stakeholders
The multiplicity of points of view, concerns, and suggestions from the global talents and their families, as well as from HR and line managers, will sharpen your understanding. By digging into the richness of diversity, you can deliver valuable support.
4 – Launch new Ideas
You are the person at the forefront of Global Mobility challenges, you experiment with them every day, and are the most legitimate to contribute to the transformation of the role.
5 – Get to know Your Vendors
Beyond the professional exchanges, understand their drivers and values, and ensure they align with yours, so that together you work towards achieving the same goals. To avoid falling behind, Global Mobility needs to embrace the change and the new technologies, not because everyone is doing it, but because it will facilitate bringing back into Global Mobility the human touch so dear to Angela Weinberger’s heart Bringing the “Human Touch” Back into Global Mobility.
As this PwC White Paper One agent to rule them all | PwC Switzerland clearly states: “Human judgment is still irreplaceable when it comes to setting priorities, resolving ambiguities, interpreting nuanced contexts, and making ethical decisions.” Precisely because every human being is unique and has her/his own set of emotions, experiences, and capabilities, only human beings have the sensibility and creativity that are inherent to innovation and progress, and that AI can’t take over.
When selecting a global talent for a project or assignment abroad, AI can help gather data on the candidate’s profile, but only humans can assess whether this is the right person for the job. AI will be pretty useless when it comes to motivating a team to reach a common goal, as human beings are full of emotions and creativity, which AI can’t compete with. However hard AI tries, it will not grasp the elusive nature of the “Human Touch”.
The challenges may cause dizziness. Still, the best way to handle them is certainly to turn them into an opportunity: it’s time to brand Global Mobility as a pivotal role in companies, as the “forward-looking, strategic and agile function” Angela Weinberger has been calling for in her publication The Global Mobility Workbook (2019) and all of her lectures on “Global Mobility”
Angela Weinberger is working on a new book on global mobility, expected to be published in 2026. You can sign up here to be invited to upcoming book launches.
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Go further in Global Mobility by joining the upcoming Master Course at Erasmus University Rotterdam in Human Resources and Global Mobility, START: 8 Jan 2026
Course Master Course Human Resources and Global Mobility | Continuing Education | Erasmus University Rotterdam
Free resources for Global Mobility Manager Expatise Academy | Global Mobility Academy
Join the Master Course in Global Mobility at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam (online course):
https://www.expatise.academy/team-1
https://globalpeopletransitions.com/my-red-couch-talk-with-eve-duvoy/
https://globalpeopletransitions.com/storytime-for-global-mobility-padawans/
Anne Rossier-Renaud and Olivier Meier, 2025 Talent Mobility Outlook | Mercer
Gerard Osei-Bonsu and Maureen Flood, EY 2025 Mobility Reimagined Survey | EY – Switzerland
Matthias Leybold, Joscha Milinski, Rodolphe Dehaspe, Martin Gundersen, Amit Joshi, José Parra Moyano, One agent to rule them all | PwC Switzerland
Angela Weinberger, Bringing the “Human Touch” Back into Global Mobility
Check out our series on Global Mobility Education.
Storytime for Global Mobility Padawans – Ten Years of First Class Global Mobility Education
Storytime for Global Mobility Padawans – Ten Years of First Class Global Mobility Education
Listen to the Red Couch Talks
My Red Couch Talk with Paul Falcone
My Red Couch Talk with Marcel Meier
My Red Couch Talk with Hugh Docherty
My Red Couch Talk with Radmilla Del Pozzo
My Red Couch Talk with Heather De Cruz-Cornaire
Go further in Global Mobility by joining the upcoming Master Course at Erasmus University Rotterdam in Human Resources and Global Mobility, START: 8 Jan 2026
Course Master Course Human Resources and Global Mobility | Continuing Education | Erasmus University Rotterdam
About the Author
Eve Duvoy relocated to Zurich, Switzerland, in September 2024. She says that Global Mobility has shaped her life, not only because she is a Global Mobility professional, but also because she was an expat and has lived and worked in different countries in Europe—the UK and Belgium—and Asia —China and Japan. Thanks to that, she has an acute understanding of the challenges faced by the assignee and their family, and this awareness has served as a compass in her role as Global Mobility Manager. After several years of experience as a Global Mobility Manager at Danone, a major food company in France, she is now a Global Mobility Manager, working as an immigration consultant to help companies manage their international moves and ensure work-from-anywhere compliance.
