The Value of Global Mobility in Market Expansions

As global mobility experts, we know that expanding into emerging markets is an increasingly important business strategy. Whether your company is preparing to send new employees on international assignments, seeking new opportunities abroad, or looking to recruit diverse talent, global mobility offers many benefits for you and your employees. Companies that are proactive in using global mobility within their expansion operations are reaping the rewards.

Let’s explore three ways global mobility can add value to your strategy for expanding into emerging markets. 

Establish an overseas presence: 

Establishing a physical presence in an emerging market is a core component of a successful expansion strategy. This process involves sending a core team of talent into the field to gain a deeper understanding of local markets, processes, and customer relations. While you’ll need to network and establish relationships with local talent on the ground, dispatching representatives from your home base to become acquainted with your new location can give your company an upperhand in becoming acclimated to local business practices.

Your core team should include representatives from leadership, HR, and legal. You can also include a global mobility consultant to help streamline your expansion processes. A global mobility consultant will be able to advise your company about local regulations, provide details on work visas, craft policy benchmarks and help your company connect with consulates or embassies. Establishing a physical presence also helps your company manage costs and make time-sensitive judgments that can mitigate potential frustrations during relocation. 

Reskill local talent: 

Your talent pool will widen significantly as your company expands globally, including access to local employees with enhanced knowledge of regional markets. Ensuring that any local talent you may hire has the characteristics and skills required to help establish your operations can provide a great competitive advantage to your expansion success. 

Providing mentorship and leadership training opportunities in the U.S. can address skill shortages by empowering and developing local talent with the technical, managerial, and leadership skills needed to address the challenges of leading in an international context. This process is referred to as reskilling and is a great way to help local talent develop new skills while minimizing costs. Once training is complete, these professionals can return to their respective markets to transition into leadership roles or accelerated career tracks. 

An added benefit of developing local talent is that they can help employees on assignment acclimate to cultural differences or overcome cultural challenges. By tapping into the knowledge, power, and cultural competency of local talent, your company will be better poised to fill critical skill gaps and bring in fresh perspectives and ideas for market expansion.

Empower your mobile workforce:  

The ability to seamlessly shuffle talent from one emerging market to the next is a benefit of global mobility that can aid your talent recruitment and retention efforts. When your company expands into emerging markets, your employees benefit from new skill development, cultural enrichment, and diversification of their communication skills. Not only does this increase your chance of attracting multinational talent, but it gives current employees an incentive to stay with your company. 

Employees who receive the opportunity to work abroad are likely to bring new perspectives and an elevated understanding of different cultures back to their workplace, leading to a more diverse and inclusive work environment that can bolster your company’s competitive advantage. Creating international work opportunities for employees can help you address important factors at the helm of retention: flexibility, career growth and skill development. Ensuring that the repatriation process is as seamless as possible for the employee is an important step in seeing the ROI on an assignment.

Conclusion:

While the benefits of global mobility are widely recognized, perhaps the most obvious benefit is the ability to advance market expansion. Using global mobility in your expansion strategy can help you scale quickly and efficiently while also providing talent with the opportunity to adapt, reskill and assume new roles. 

The key to successful business expansion is ensuring you have the right people and strategies in place to streamline the process. Ineo offers robust, customizable global mobility software solutions capable of scaling with your company as it grows over time. Contact us today to learn more about how the Ineo Platform software and industry experts can support your global mobility needs for expansion. 

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