By Anne Rossier-Renaud, Mercer
Although talent mobility analytics have not yet reached full maturity, the ability to use and share these analytics to streamline organizational decision-making is becoming an increasingly important trend for companies around the world.
The adoption of analytics to inform global HR decisions is growing in popularity with each passing year and like so many other things in the world of human resources, this trend is being driven by the need to further streamline international HR management without increasing the costs or complexities of managing overseas assignments.
Recent data from Mercer’s 2019 Mobility Metrics and Analytics Survey provides notable information for benchmarking one’s own analytics and performance against the market at large. Below are some key findings and an exclusive sample of some of the many global HR insights contained in the 2019 survey report.
Where are participants on their global mobility metrics and analytics journeys?
The 2019 survey results indicate that the majority of respondents still only report and capture the basic information about their assignments. In other words, these participants only track the essential information about assignments that will allow them to produce basic aggregated metrics, capture assignment patterns, and give an overview of costs.
On the other hand, using advanced or predictive analytics is exercised in less than 5% of 2019’s participating companies, as shown in the following responses:
- 46% of participants focus on capturing and reporting only the “basic information” about their assignments.
- 38% of participants are successfully tracking information about assignments and can produce basic aggregated metrics to capture assignment patterns and give an overview of costs.
- 12% of participants produce detailed metrics on assignment patterns and costs and are introducing analytics to evaluate the performance of assignments and/or the mobility function.
- 3% of participants produce detailed analytics to evaluate the success of assignments and optimize the costs of mobility.
- 1% of participants produce detailed analytics on most aspects of mobility, calculate the ROI of mobility, and have predictive analytics in place to predict the success of an assignment and its impact on an assignee’s career.
Barriers to workforce mobility analytics
Given the statistics listed above, it’s clear that workforce mobility analytics strategies are still in the initial adoption phases by organizations. Like you, many of the participating global companies are wondering: what are some of the barriers to developing more comprehensive mobility analytics in spite of organizations’ increasingly advanced capabilities for doing so?
As it turns out, the 2019 survey showed that almost two-thirds of participants cited in-house technological limitations such as manual spreadsheets as key barriers to developing more comprehensive talent mobility analytics.
In addition, assessing, managing, and interpreting these metrics and analytics requires a very particular set of skills. As it turns out, however, only 15% of participants said that they thought they were currently equipped with the right skill sets within the Mobility team to assess, manage, and interpret these metrics. 20% said they are equipped with the right skillset in the company (across functions/departments).
Learn more about the findings of the 2019 Mobility Metrics and Analytics Survey
In addition to expanding upon the summarized insights above, the 2019 Mobility Metrics and Analytics Survey also contains exclusive insights into a wide variety of other factors surrounding metrics and analytics that are key to gauging your international HR management initiatives.
Mercer’s 2019 Mobility Metrics and Analytics Survey