In order to get the right people in the right local markets when they are needed, do we need to move jobs to the people, not people to the jobs?

As an international/global organisation we are quite flexible about job location outside of hotels of course where the service to the customer has to generally happen where the customer is. For corporate and support roles we absolutely encourage people to be based where they want, we deploy technology and communication to their home offices, we only stipulate they must be mobile and flexible to the extent that the job requires, but do not mandate they attend a central office location every day. Clearly travel logistics and associated costs have to be reasonable and we look for overall neutral financial impact of any arrangement. In that sense we allow the jobs to be located where the people are as long as they are the right people with the right job and culture fit, and that they deliver the right outcomes which is what they are measured by.      

I believe we need to challenge the notion that jobs must be delivered from a specific location or within a specific market. In this ever connected world in which we now live more and more people are working flexibly and remotely. Clearly there are some roles that require face to face contact, but in many cases the need to be in the same place stems from historic custom and practice rather than necessity. Leveraging technology such as instant messaging, video chat, webinars, etc, enables many roles to be discharged from just about anywhere (assuming the bandwidth is good enough!).  So in summary, my response to the question would be ‘yes – move the jobs to the people wherever they want to be based’.      

In a hotel business we have less flexibility in moving workplaces to suit the individual and given that our hotels are in disparate locations throughout the UK we find that our talent sometimes are not willing to move location for a new role or promotion.  Our talent programme is call “rising stars” and individuals are selected onto through their scores on the online performance management tool, talent toolbox.  Our employees are rated against five core service behaviours, attention to detail, relationships, resilience, energy and passion.  Apart from performance our employees are also rated in terms of potential and one factor we use to determine potential apart from careers aspirations is mobility.  Our rising stars then participate in development days to bench mark talent and receive a personal development plan after which involves discussing locations where they would be prepared to move to.  We then manage the careers of these individuals throughout our business hierarchy.  With this strategy and by making it clear in our employer promise right from the recruitment stage that we will appoint from within and offer great career opportunities in return for high mobility in the early stages of their career.  This strategy has proved very successful so far and we achieve an internal promotion rate of over 85% as a result.      

Having the right people in local markets is vital for the success of any global business, following the old mantra ‘think global, act local’, means that we need great people on the ground to deliver. Many multi-nationals have traditionally moved ex-pat, or third country nationals to local markets because they were not sufficiently tuned in to local talent. In many cases good people are already where the jobs need to be. We just need to match these up.