Guest Author: Jovina Rasiah – Global Head of Mobility, ResMed
Are our Global Mobility dashboards telling us what matters, or simply what is easiest to count?
That question should make us pause. For years, mobility teams have become increasingly sophisticated in tracking operational performance. We measure the number of assignments, relocation volumes, policy exceptions, processing times, vendor performance, service level agreements, employee satisfaction, and cost management. These measures are not wrong. In fact, they are essential. They help us govern risk, manage vendors, control spend, improve employee experience, and maintain consistency in how mobility programs are delivered.
But here is the harder question: are these the measures that matter most to CEOs, CHROs and business leaders?
If an executive team only saw our mobility dashboard, would they understand our strategic value? Or would they see a function that is efficient, compliant and service-oriented, but still fundamentally administrative? This is not a criticism of operational excellence. Mobility needs strong execution. A poorly managed move can create tax risk, immigration exposure, employee dissatisfaction, cost leakage and business disruption. Operational metrics help us identify where processes are working and where discipline is needed. They provide visibility, structure and accountability.
However, operational KPIs can also create an unintended consequence. They can reinforce the perception that Global Mobility exists primarily to process moves, manage vendors and ensure policy compliance. If the measures we report are largely about activity, then we should not be surprised if the function is viewed through an activity lens.
This is where the profession needs to think more deeply.
Global Mobility has evolved significantly. It is no longer just about moving employees from one country to another under a traditional assignment model. Mobility now sits at the intersection of workforce planning, skills, talent deployment, employee experience, cost, compliance, remote work, location strategy and organisational resilience. The business questions have changed. So perhaps our measures need to evolve as well.
Are we enabling the business to deploy critical talent faster? Are we helping close skills gaps in priority markets? Are we strengthening organisational capability? Are we supporting transformation by getting the right people to the right place at the right time? Are we influencing better workforce decisions before a move is even initiated?
These questions are harder to measure. That may be why they often sit outside the dashboard.
It is much easier to report that an assignment was initiated, approved and delivered within agreed service levels than to demonstrate how that assignment contributed to a product launch, market expansion, leadership pipeline or capability build. It is easier to measure the cost of a relocation than the value of having critical expertise embedded in a market at the right moment. It is easier to track policy compliance than to assess whether the mobility decision was the best workforce solution in the first place.
But if Global Mobility wants a stronger strategic voice, this is the territory we need to enter.
The profession often speaks about becoming a strategic business partner. Yet strategic partnership is not achieved by language alone. It is earned through the conversations we shape, the decisions we influence and the outcomes we help the business deliver. If our reporting focuses mainly on transactions, we risk telling only part of the story.Have we confused operational excellence with strategic impact?
A mobility function can be highly efficient and still not be strategically influential. It can process moves quickly, manage costs well and maintain strong vendor performance, while still being brought into workforce decisions too late. It can deliver a positive employee experience, while having limited influence over whether the move aligns with broader workforce strategy. It can be compliant and well governed, yet still struggle to demonstrate how it enables business growth, agility or resilience. That is the uncomfortable tension.
The future of mobility is increasingly tied to workforce agility. Organisations are navigating skills shortages, shifting employee expectations, geopolitical uncertainty, cost pressure, hybrid work, emerging markets, transformation programs and changing business models. In this context, mobility is not simply a service that moves people. It can be a strategic mechanism for deploying capability, accelerating knowledge transfer, building leadership depth and supporting enterprise change.
But do our current measures reflect that? What decisions are our current metrics helping leaders make? Are they helping leaders understand where talent is constrained? Are they showing whether mobility is accelerating strategic priorities? Are they helping the organisation decide when to move talent, when to hire locally, when to build skills internally, or when to rethink location strategy altogether?
If the answer is no, then perhaps the issue is not the quality of our dashboards. Perhaps it is the frame we have inherited.
Traditional mobility metrics were built for a world where the move itself was the central event. Today, the move is often just one part of a broader workforce decision. The real value may sit upstream, in advising the business on options, risks and trade-offs before a decision is made. It may sit downstream, in whether the move created lasting capability or simply solved a short-term resourcing issue. It may sit across the enterprise, in how mobility insights inform workforce planning, talent strategy and organisational design.
This does not mean abandoning operational measures. Governance still matters. Cost still matters. Compliance still matters. Employee experience still matters. The point is not to replace these measures with a new set of fashionable metrics. The point is to ask whether they are sufficient.
If we stopped reporting assignment volumes tomorrow, how would we demonstrate our contribution? That question is worth sitting with.
Because the challenge with business impact is that it is rarely owned by one function. Mobility may enable a strategic outcome, but it may not control the entire outcome. A successful market entry, transformation program or capability build involves business leaders, Talent, Reward, Finance, HR, Legal and many others. Measuring mobility’s contribution requires more nuance than counting transactions. It requires stronger alignment with business priorities, better storytelling, and a willingness to connect mobility activity to enterprise outcomes without overstating causality. That is difficult. But difficulty is not a reason to avoid the conversation.
The next phase of Global Mobility may not be defined by whether we can process moves faster or negotiate better vendor terms, although both remain important. It may be defined by whether we can help organisations make smarter workforce decisions in an increasingly uncertain world. It may depend on whether we can move from reporting what happened to explaining why it mattered.
So perhaps the real question is not simply, “What should the next generation of workforce metrics look like?” Perhaps it is: Are we asking the right questions in the first place?
If Global Mobility wants to be seen as a strategic function, we need to be thoughtful about the evidence we use to demonstrate value. The future of the profession may depend not only on what we do, but on how we define and measure success.
