Unifying the mobility experience across your vendor ecosystem
How to be intentional about your end-to-end all-mobility experience
If you work in global mobility, this will be a scenario you may have seen play out many times before with your employees: They are eagerly preparing for a mobility experience, only to find themselves navigating a complex web of interactions with various service providers. Each provider handles a crucial aspect of their move, from housing and shipping to cultural integration support, tax planning, and immigration services. Each provider operates under its own Service Level Agreement (SLA), determining how they communicate and engage. It’s a whirlwind of information, and they are expected to absorb and retain countless details for future use. The reality is, it’s overwhelming; they've become a treasure hunter sifting through mountains of information, desperately seeking valuable nuggets to remember months down the line, all while potentially dealing with emotional moments like finding new schools for children, moving pets, and making sure they have Wi-Fi at home. Without a unified approach, the employee experience becomes disjointed and stressful, not ideal when they have a job to do too and they may share their negative experience with the mobility team, the business as a whole and maybe their social media contacts too. This is where the concept of a defined mobility brand comes into play—a strategic way to shape an exceptional experience across your entire vendor ecosystem.
Define the North Star for your program
At its core, a defined mobility brand represents your company's promise to employees about what they can expect from the global mobility experience. It serves as a guiding star, ensuring that every interaction aligns with the company's ethos, culture, and service expectations, irrespective of the vendor involved. From the simplest tasks to complex elements such as tax planning and the immigration process, a defined mobility brand ensures your vendors know what matters to you and what you expect the experience for your people to be.
High-stakes consequences
The absence of a deliberate mobility brand experience can yield significant consequences. Companies are likely to encounter hurdles in establishing employee trust, attracting and retaining top talent, and may contradict the overarching corporate vision.
By aligning your vendors to your mobility brand, you provide employees with a trustworthy compass that creates a clear path throughout their entire mobility journey, ensuring every step aligns with a consistent and unified experience. It’s not just beneficial, but crucial in shaping a positive and streamlined employee experience.
From a program management perspective, having guiding principles that span across your vendors reduces noise and time spent, while ensuring that you are reporting back to the business on an experience that reflects the values and priorities of your organization. A consistent brand framework that's end-to-end can foster success and reinforce a strong corporate culture. As we navigate the intricacies of mobility encompassing remote work, business travel and beyond, it is vital to remember the importance of your guiding star—a robust and intentional mobility brand.
Vialto perspective
At Vialto, our Mobility Brand, Communications and Experience team are problem-solving multi-vendor experience challenges with our clients and working with them to consider how the assignment actually feels, from the moment an employee considers a mobility journey, right through to repatriation. Clients are increasingly interested in the power of on-brand communications and are rapidly understanding the impact that communication specialists can have on the experience as a whole. When it comes to multi-vendor communications strategy and experience, the magic comes in understanding an organization's North Star and then applying the right mix of tax/immigration technical expertise with on-brand communications to make the complex clear for your employees.
The task can feel complex when you are managing it alone, but there are some steps you can take to ensure that your vendors are aligned with your mobility brand.
Define Your company's mobility brand and values: Understand and articulate your mobility brand. Take a look at our previous article on how to develop an internal brand for mobility, HR, and talent teams with a shared mobility vision.
Develop a tone and voice guide: Let vendors know how to communicate with your employees with real-world examples. This guide can serve as a valuable resource tool, helping vendors communicate consistently and align with your brand values.
Communicate with your vendors: Share your tone and voice guide with your vendors. Organize a vendor summit to explain your expectations and answer questions, ensuring vendors understand and can uphold your company's mobility brand.
Don't forget: Measure the success of your program in alignment with your brand and what matters to you. We often see organizations asking employees to rate the timing or efficiency, when what the employees care about is how it felt. Be specific and ask for feedback at the right time with milestone triggers.
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