By Anne Rossier-Renaud and Olivier Meier, Mercer
The concept of automation conjures all sorts of images in the mind of HR professionals: unrealistic vision of HR teams freed from menial work as well as fear of more job losses in a function already threatened by outsourcing and delocalization. As the adoption of automation accelerates, HR and mobility teams cannot stay out of the debate and need to develop a clear vision for the implementation of new technologies as well as practical strategies to ensure that automation benefits both the company and the employees. The adoption of automation should be part of a wider reflection to help HR become a people-centered function that places a premium on exceptional personal and digital employee interactions, with employee satisfaction as the key success metric.
A work in progress
Almost one-third of companies are already using automation to manage at least part of their mobility tasks. However, most of them are just at early stage of using automation and less than 10% do it in a significant way. Another third would like to implement automation but have not taken action yet. Just below 31% of companies report that they do not plan to introduce automation for the time being.
Are automation solutions being used to streamline parts of your global mobility process? (N=116)
| Yes, we are using automation in a significant way |
8.6% |
| Yes, we are just beginning to use automation |
21.6% |
| No, we are not using automation but would like to |
32.8% |
| No, we are not using automation but do not currently intend to |
31.0 % |
| Other |
6.0% |
Source: Mercer 2019’s Mobility Organization and Transformation Survey
Addressing the vision gap
While the interest for automation is there, a lack of clear vision seems to hold back many organizations: almost half of companies don’t have a clear strategic vision about mobility management automation. And the ones with a vision don’t always translate it into action.
Respondents report that they are still evaluating their options or trying to evaluate their internal infrastructures and resources. Implementing new solutions raise issues about system integration. The integration of new technology needs to be planned with the requirements of the whole organization in mind. Mobility tasks involve manipulating data that stems from multiple sources in HR but also from other departments and geographically spread business units.
The fact that mobility and HR teams often don’t have the budget and skills to implement new solutions on their own also put the brakes on automation and militates for an integrated company-wide strategy.
Do you have a strategic vision for automation/robotization of global mobility management in your company? (N=118)
| Yes, we have a strategic vision but no action is currently being taken |
11.0% |
| We are beginning to assess the need for such a strategic vision |
29.7% |
| No, we don’t have a strategic vision |
44.9% |
| Other |
5.1% |
| Not applicable |
9.3% |
Source: Mercer 2019’s Mobility Organization and Transformation Survey
How to benefit from Automation?
The objectives behind automation are to alleviate workload and ultimately reduce costs as well as eliminate errors.
Not surprisingly, respondents intended focus is on automating recurring work such as cost projections and assignment documents or recurring reports generation over interaction with assignees (e.g. assignee briefings.)
What are the main areas that you are most interested in automating? (N=110)
| Cost projection |
50.0% |
| Creation of assignment documents |
42.7% |
| Generation of recurring reports |
35.5% |
| Assignment initiation |
27.3% |
| Immigration: initiation, tracking, monitoring and compliance |
25.5% |
| Payroll instructions (including gross ups and assignment allowance calculations) |
23.6% |
| Tax: initiation, tracking, monitoring and compliance |
21.8% |
| Compensation calculations |
20.9% |
| Compensation collection |
18.2% |
| Vendor initiation/authorization |
18.2% |
| Assignee briefings |
4.5% |
Source: Mercer 2019’s Mobility Organization and Transformation Survey
Mobility professionals report that their aim is to facilitate administration but not replace the team. They doubt that the entire function can be automatized due to the high level of service required by assignees. Automation could even balance off-sourcing or job delocalization by offering a cheaper option to maintain the HR activities in-house and in the same location.
The challenge for many HR professionals is to determine the right balance between automation and the human touch. On the one hand, maintaining the human touch is important as HR is dealing with complex human issues affecting not only the employees but also their entire families. On the other hand, the very qualities that make us human also produce imperfections that impact the quality of the services. Some assignees need to be handled with sensitivity and psychology while in other cases, employees have no desire to contact a human available only during business hours, who might not be customer oriented, and won’t have readily available answers.
Ultimately, the issue is not just the degree of automation but how to manage effectively the interaction between human users and the machine.
The benefits of a people-centric approach
One of the risk of implementation is to design solutions that replicate current approaches instead of taking this opportunity to re-think processes from a user perspective using Design Thinking. The fundamental questions behind the Design Thinking philosophy are: How to put the employee’s experience at the center of the solution development process? How to learn from stakeholders and end users’ experiences to simplify processes and make tool and solutions intuitive and easy to use?
Organizations have traditionally relied on the “Target Operating Model” describing a desired framework largely based on the experience of management and HR. It is time to shift to a “Target Interaction Model” focused on facilitating and delivering exceptional personal and digital employee interactions.
Implementing a Target Interaction Model involves different steps:
- Defining the model: what should be the p erfect HR role to allow the company to deliver its objectives while elevating the employee experience? A combination of Design Thinking workshops and solution prototyping using Agile approaches can help the function answers this question and set its compass.
- Assessing the current state of the function: A thorough and honest assessment based on interviews and analyses to understand the current employee experience, business impact, maturity of the function as well as current degree of automation is required.
- Establishing a baseline user experience: In practice this means mapping the path that assignees, HR, and management have to follow. Are there grey policy areas, communication issues, or tools and solutions that are not user friendly? Where are the touchpoints when dealing with the different assignment types? The answers to this questions can be translated into a journey map detailing visually the story / experience from the user's or employee’s perspective. Employee personas can be used to better understand the characteristics and needs of the different groups of employees .
- Considering the interactions that will deliver the service portfolio: This includes the role of people leaders (shifting from the role of rule enforcers to team coaches), the level of interaction (personal or high touch), and the communication channels as well as the potential need for different types of interactions for different talent groups.
- Delivering the Target Integration Model service portfolio holistically across the organization: a successful transformation covers several dimensions: processes, systems, content and organization. All these dimensions need to addressed simultaneously as fixing a system problem in isolation could trigger systemic issues elsewhere.
Implementing new solutions to automatize mobility management is not merely a technical question. It is an opportunity to participate in strategic discussions about business transformation and position HR and mobility professionals as “people experience architects” – i.e. key players in the future of work.
Find out more about automating mobility management tasks with Mercer’s Mobility Management Platform.