Mobility guides and whitepapers

Featured here are a selection of recent guides and viewpoints on global mobility from the experts at Mercer.

Guides to mobility fundamentals

The beginner's guide to global mobility: a comprehensive overview

2021 update! Download this practical handbook for a comprehensive overview of the key factors and trends in building expatriate packages, including compensation approaches, allowances and premiums (cost of living, housing, quality of living/hardship) as well as international tax considerations.

What's the best method to pay my expatriates?

This guide explains the various approaches to compensating expatriates. The one you choose must reflect your organization's compensation philosophy while supporting your strategic talent mobility aims and staying within budget.

Developing a new mobility policy

Far more than just a simple document with a list of allowances and benefits, a mobility policy is setting the key principles and philosophy used to manage assignees. This step-by-step guide explains the considerations involved.

Expatriate compensation

Practical mobility management: compensation tips for long-term assignments

There is more to expatriate compensation than just covering relocation expenses and adding a few allowances to the base salary. When managing a mobile global workforce, mastering the complexity of the global compensation landscape means juggling multiple compensation approaches and the increasing segmentation of mobility policies. Here are a few pointers to help you navigate the meanders of long-term assignment compensation.

Four steps in revisiting mobile talent compensation

The scope of global mobility is rapidly shifting from expatriate management to a more comprehensive vision of talent mobility. At the same time, business priorities and strategies also change. Expatriate compensation management need to follow this evolution. Here are four simple steps for revisiting compensation approaches for mobile assignees, integrating new trends, and realigning your policies with business priorities.

Talent strategy in times of currency volatility and inflation fluctuation

This whitepaper, discusses the impact of economic turmoil on mobility programs and offers approaches for protecting employees from it.

Expatriate program management

Mobile talent management: mind the gaps

When we look closely at talent mobility practices, a number of unresolved issues, or “gaps”, appear. They are related to the discrepancy between initial objectives and the reality of mobility from diversity, technological, generational, and talent management perspectives.

Two minutes to understand global mobility management

This collection of articles offers a quick overview of several key areas in the field of global mobility management.

Practical mobility management: what could go wrong?

Based on discussions with mobility managers and real case studies, here is a non-exhaustive list of common mobility misconceptions and issues that can cause problems down the line or make the life of mobility managers more difficult.

Practical global mobility management

Setting up local plus approaches, policy segmentation, cost containment, and exception management are some of the key issues for mobility managers. This free white paper helps you address these issues.

Flexibility in mobility policy

As mobility managers grapple with increasingly international and mobile workforces and changing generational expectations, flexibility with mobility policy becomes imperative. For organizations that seek to provide fair and consistent policies globally, there are new models that provide choice.

Talent mobility strategy

Building a diverse and inclusive mobile workforce

This guide gives companies a framework for assessing the diversity, equity, and inclusion of their mobile workforces and provides steps they can take to improve it.

Summary and PDF download

Fostering a thriving mobile workforce

This whitepaper builds on findings from Mercer’s 2018 Global Talent Trends report to focus on action points for global mobility.

Global mobility: the path to diversity

Fostering diversity within the workforce is not just a moral imperative, it also makes economic sense. It allows companies to tap into new talent pools and provide a significant advantage in the global talent war. In this article, we look at the interrelations among mobility, diversity, and talent development, and outline four steps in implement diversity enablers in mobility policy.

The future of global mobility: seven dilemmas

This whitepaper combines our series of articles on emerging trends in the global workforce that will challenge program managers in the near future. Topics include millennials in the global workforce, job mobility versus employee mobility, extended business trips and commuters, the rise of expatriate gig workers, flexibility versus duty of care, older expatriates, and diversity in non-diverse locations.

The road to the future: anticipating mobile workforce evolution

The future of mobility calls for organizations to balance flexibility with business needs. Future success will require flexible segmented-policy and appropriate compensation models that also understand and address multiple generations of talent. In today’s ever-changing economy and global talent war, it becomes all the more vital to invest the right amount, in the right parts of the workforce, at the right time to achieve returns with the most impact.

Mobility transformation and technology

Digitalization checklist

The right software solutions can be transformational for global mobility teams, enabling them to manage their international programs and processes more efficiently and safely. But lack of proper preparation and planning could result in multiple issues you’ll need to face once the implementation process is already underway. Avoid this trap with our checklist that helps you structure your thinking in three essential areas.

Download the checklist

Using technology to optimize global mobility

We take a critical look at which parts of the expatriate management cycle are most amenable to technology solutions, then consider when and how to implement them to optimize program management processes.

Transforming global mobility: the journey toward optimization, automation, and business partnering

This point of view takes an in-depth look at the processes and technology transforming mobility across companies today.

How to affordably transform your global mobility program and add value to your business

For businesses with small to mid-sized mobility programs, having an effective assignment management platform is the key to success. AssignmentPro Core is the solution.

News and articles Explore other topics in mobility and learn of news affecting mobility programs.

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Mobility webcasts Hear from Mercer's experts on mobility as they present on various timely topics in our webcast series. Register for an upcoming session, or watch a recording from our archive of sessions from recent years.

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