Global Mobility, Online Peer Exchange

According to a recent survey in The FT:  “About one in 16 people employed in the UK (1.9 million workers) intend to work from abroad for at least part of this year.” The survey also reported that almost half of all respondents said they could do their job just as well from another country.

At the height of the pandemic, governments and employers were reconciled to parking the difficult questions associated with the international mobility of many of their key workers. However, allowing these arrangements to continue on a longer-term basis raises many untested problems. Governments have never been keen on people living and working in one jurisdiction and paying tax in another.

Yet the tightening competition for talent in a number of countries means that finding and securing key staff is likely to become more difficult – as do the stricter immigration rules. Being able to employ across borders has significant attractions for both businesses and employees. Already there are companies ready to act as a go between to facilitate such cross border working. Nevertheless, the law is far from clear. This ambiguity will create profitable workstreams for lawyers, consultants and outsourced service providers. 

In this, the second of our facilitated peer-to-peer discussions amongst PARC members, we aim to bring greater clarity to this complex question. With specialist input from an expert on international tax, we will provide some initial commentary. We will then use the subsequent discussion to develop a greater understanding of how member companies are developing strategies in response to these questions and how employment policies are evolving as a result. We will focus on questions such as:

• To what extent have you been required to review and re-communicate your organisation’s global mobility policy as a consequence of the pandemic?
• How are you balancing an employee’s perceived right to ‘work from anywhere’ with tax and regulatory risk?
• What do you perceive as the positive and negative impacts of your organisation’s position on global mobility to attract the right talent in the right location?
• What has been the impact of such mobility during the past 12 months on your workforce planning – and will there be a longer term impact.
• Are you making greater use of technology or of any third party service providers to manage issues relating to global mobility?

A summary of the discussion will be shared with participants on a non-attributable basis.

This is a new and rapidly evolving landscape. Our session will bring some evidence and insights to a question which is likely to become more salient for many businesses over the next few years.