State of the Industry 2017
“May you live in interesting times” goes the ancient Chinese curse, and the last 12 months have certainly been pretty fascinating. Trump and Brexit aside, the topics being discussed at mobility conferences I’ve been to over the past year are strikingly similar. In Asia, the US, Africa and Europe, the hot topics in mobility are protectionism, millennials and artificial intelligence. At the recent EuRA Conference in Warsaw, the meta theme was “The Power of Challenge” and these three topics were central to the sessions and discussions.
The geopolitical event which kicked off the protectionism debate in Europe is the war in Syria and attitudes to immigration have shifted dramatically. Two results of this have been Trump’s travel ban and the UK’s Conservative manifesto promise to cut migration for skilled workers. All of the research from our industry talks unequivocally of the vital importance of talent mobility for economic growth. Last year EuRA and the Canadian Employee Relocation Council (CERC) undertook a big meta data analysis of mobility research and 89% of organisations polled had plans to increase their mobile workers in the next two years. The top motivator for moving employees abroad was reported as the need to fill talent gaps. 80% listed talent management as the the key reason for shifting human resources internationally. Unfortunately governments do not seem to have seen this;
"Globalization has rendered the world increasingly interdependent, but international politics is still based on the sovereignty of states." - George Soros
This political move to isolationism may be reflecting a global zeitgeist of popular feeling, but it is bad for business. The result of this in our sphere has been the rise of the stealth expat; that individual working in one country, living in another. In skills based roles, it’s very easy for corporations to circumvent immigration rules by commuting employees or simply having them work remotely. This has prompted many relocation companies to focus on high value, highly technical immigration services to assist corporations to stay within the law.
A phenomenon that has also changed the view of corporate mobility is the rise of the millennial in the workplace. Received wisdom is that this generation regard the world as their global workplace and consequently have different attitudes on how they will approach their careers, disregarding loyalty in favour of new experiences. In the HHG sphere, there is concern that the focus on experiences over possessions will impact on global moves. However, in a discussion I was part of recently, a more realistic paradigm was explored; we were all young once, we all valued experiences over things, it’s just the tech that has changed, not the underlying mind set. It’s human nature to grow up, settle down, find a partner, stability, family. In some ways the drive to find career success, given high living costs in most countries, pushes the need for stability. But the big question is, how capable are millennials of fitting into our current corporate structures?
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) provokes fear and loathing in many of us. The impacts on traditional mobility services are probably more augmentation than replacement, but for shipping and logistics, the changes could be profound. Self driving technology threatens to disrupt the workforce. But in another discussion I was part of, one colleague raised a very important issue; public faith. We all know that ‘planes are totally automated. The pilots are there because our faith in technology is just not as strong as our faith in people. There is something more sinister in our minds about a car crash caused by a computer than by a person. The other issue which may limit the public acceptance of certain AI applications is security. The massive hacks that seem to be a daily part of our lives are scary enough when the reason is theft or fraud. I was among the billion people who were affected by the hack of Yahoo 2013 which was not revealed until 2016. But apply that level of public fear to the hacking of a fully integrated AI system for air traffic control for example, and I like most other people, want that professional still sitting in front of that screen guiding my ‘plane to the ground.
In spite of protectionism, millennials and AI, corporations will still need to move people in order to grow and maintain markets. In our latest research project with CERC, we asked 10,000 people where they would happiest moving to. The USA is still number one, with Canada, the UK, Australia and Germany making the top 5. As of now, only Germany is actively pursuing policies to promote growth through immigration and this is where our industry is facing its biggest challenge. The organisations in our space need to be working at governmental levels to fight the popular backlash. We will see.