Organizations Struggling to Manage a Global Workforce

 

As companies move an increasing amount of their work to other countries, many are struggling to find governance structures that can oversee this diverse workforce, according to a recent report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

In the study, PwC found that many companies are going to grow increase the number of mobile workers they have, with a 50 per cent increase expected between now and 2015.

While this increase will be considerable, many businesses are already struggling to oversee their mobile workers on a global level. In fact, only 9 per cent of organizations have been able to accurately measure the return on investment they are getting from having staff operating around the world.

In the survey, PwC went on to suggest that the vast majority of HR teams don’t have the tools and infrastructure in place to support a dispersed organizational structure.

Clearly, many companies are struggling to communicate and connect staff with their core goals when they are operating overseas. One way to resolve this is to integrate cloud-based strategy mapping software into a company’s structure. This makes it easy for different teams and individuals to understand their company’s strategy in a highly transparent way.

Peter Clarke, global network leader for Global Employee Mobility services at PwC, suggested a global workforce was going to increase the challenges that company managers felt.

“Our research highlights that there is currently too much disconnect between organizations’ mobility policies and their business needs, with only 6 per cent confident that they are aligning the two,” he stated.

“Businesses need to have a clear global mobility strategy which is based on growth priorities and what skills they are going to need and where, backed up by plans on how they are going to source, deploy, manage and motivate employees who work internationally.”

As more workers continue to operate in different parts of the world, the need for an organization-wide approach to strategy is only going to become more important.