The year 2025 has been marked by heightened volatility—from geopolitical shifts and economic uncertainties to abrupt changes in visa policies and widening skill mismatches arising from technological shifts. The pressure on organisations to manage talent has intensified. Many companies have invested heavily in business continuity planning, focusing on building robust systems and safeguards into their operations. However, they often overlook a critical variable: the ability to deploy talent quickly, compliantly, and sustainably across borders when disruption hits.
It is not just about “moving people” but involves a wide range of challenges including immigration restrictions, tax and payroll implications, remote work feasibility, and even family relocation concerns. Without clear strategies to address these issues, even the most comprehensive continuity plans risks falling apart in practice. This is why global mobility must shift from a back-office operations and logistics function (where it remains in some organisations) to an embedded component of business risk and resilience planning.
The missing people dimension in continuity planning
When the Russia–Ukraine war escalated, many organisations were forced to act overnight. Employees needed to be moved out of conflict zones quickly, often into neighbouring countries, so work could continue and people could remain safe. In our work supporting companies through these relocations, it became clear that immediate action, while critical, was only the first phase of the challenge.
As such crises prolong, more complex questions start to surface. How long can displaced employees continue working from new locations? What employment obligations apply once short-term arrangements become semi-permanent? How should compensation, tax, and compliance be managed in countries where the organization has no legal entity? What initially looked like a temporary workaround quickly becomes a test of whether organisations have planned for the people dimension of continuity at all.
In our experience, many business continuity plans fail to address these questions. Mobility is often brought in too late, seen as a logistical or compliance function rather than a strategic input. Without early collaboration between business leaders, risk, HR, and mobility teams, organisations underestimate people-related frictions such as immigration constraints, tax exposure, remote work limitations, and family considerations. When disruption hits, these blind spots slow execution, strain employees, and ultimately put business continuity at risk.
What mobility leaders can do now
Organisations that falter in times of disruption are often those where mobility enters the conversation too late. Those that succeed bring mobility to the table early and plan with people in mind.
Achieving this requires shared commitment from leadership and mobility teams. Together, they need to elevate the function from execution to strategic enabler. Mobility professionals, in turn, need to combine operational expertise with strategic awareness to earn their seat at the table. Only then can mobility move beyond policy design to become a capability embedded in how organisations anticipate, test, and respond to crisis scenarios.
Here are four practical actions HR teams can take:
- Bring mobility into the early stages of risk and scenario planning
Mobility needs to be part of early scenario discussions, such as geopolitical escalation, sudden market exits, supply chain disruption, or leadership displacement. By collaborating with legal, risk, and strategy teams from the start, mobility leaders can help surface potential talent deployment risks early, such as talent shortages, location-based constraints, or the absence of succession plans. - Map critical roles, locations, and talent pipelines with contingency in mind
Work with business leaders to identify roles that are essential to business continuity, such as regional heads, plant leads, or key client-facing positions, and develop a live map of successors or backup candidates. For each role, assess mobility readiness, including visa status, family situation, and willingness to relocation. This ensures there is a feasible ‘plan B’. - Design scenario-based mobility playbooks
Prepare contingency plans tailored to different types of disruption. These playbooks should include clear pathways for internal or external redeployment, short-term assignments or virtual support options, and hybrid deployment models. Mobility leaders should also ensure these plans are operationally viable by taking into account payroll, tax, remote work approvals, IT access, and dependent support. - Define mobility “trigger points” in risk systems
Work with cross-functional teams to embed mobility into the organization’s early warning systems. For example, when a critical role remains vacant beyond a defined threshold, mobility leaders should initiate a review of talent redeployment options with business, legal, and operations teams to evaluate and execute appropriate action, supporting faster, more coordinated decision-making when disruption unfolds.
The people factor that makes continuity plans work
When crisis hits, plans don’t fail because companies lack playbooks, but because those playbooks leave out the people component. Without the right mobility mechanisms in place, organisations are left scrambling to make decisions under pressure, exposing themselves to compliance risks and operational delays.
Embedding mobility into continuity planning helps fill this gap. It enables faster response, smoother deployment, and more coordinated recovery. In an era of constant disruption, true resilience is about people who are ready, willing, and able to move.
About the author
Ben is the APAC Lead for Remote Work and the Singapore team leader at Vialto Partners, where he works with organisations across the region in relation to enabling global work and the strategic alignment of talent and mobility.
With more than 25 years of experience, Ben has advised multinational clients on cross-border workforce solutions, remote work policies and implementation and cross border tax optimisation with particular speciality in Australia, US and Singporean taxes. He has for many years also assisted foreign entertainers, sportspeople and the organisations that employer in relation to the tax and immigration considerations of their international operations.
