Global mobility is a broad spectrum of topics, including tax, relocation, immigration, technology platforms, compensation and incentivisation, payroll, assignment and travel planning. It’s a complex field as it involves multiple jurisdictions and requires a knowledge of domestic law and practice and international law in terms of tax and social security.
There are many use cases from:
- busy executives needing to fly from New York to London to attend a business meeting;
- to medium-term assignments for work that require a work permit to
- Engaging contract workers on missions in an unfamiliar country.
The movement around the world could be for a family reunion on a tourist visa if one is needed. Or it might entail business meetings or attendance at trade shows, in which case it may be that a business visa is appropriate. If gainful work is involved, that will call for a work and residence visa.
A global corporate may have local entities to send its staff or contractors. In this case, it can issue letters of support or even sponsor work visas for its mobile workforce. Smaller organisations will not have access to such resources and may need another entity to provide these services.
Some companies may not have an entity, while others still do not want the complexity of employing their workers on an alien payroll. There is a solution to this: to use an Employer of Record (EOR). An EOR provider can hire the worker on its payroll and attend to the formalities in return for a monthly invoice.
Some EOR providers, although not all, can sponsor work permits for workers. We can safely say that the prominent immigration specialists and global consultancies tend to shy away from this activity, and it is necessary to find a specialist provider such as Access Financial.
Covid and Brexit have affected the ease and even feasibility of global mobility. On top of these, the events in Eastern Europe will dampen the enthusiasm for unnecessary business travel, but globalisation continues.
We have seen a mushrooming of businesses moving into this space, and it will be interesting to see how this settles down. A huge raft of them specialises in remote overseas workers, and we hope that quality will prevail and there will not be a rush to the bottom.
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