KPMG says global mobility needs flexible, digital talent strategies

Rachel Paul said KPMG’s 2025 Global Mobility Benchmarking Report surveyed 456 multinational enterprises. The function now reaches far beyond expatriate administration: economic and geopolitical uncertainty, evolving regulatory demands, and disruptive new technologies are redefining the global mobility landscape, and the new playbook is to access talent wherever it sits while keeping control and compliance intact.

Mobility is being recast as workforce infrastructure

KPMG’s 2024 Global Mobility Benchmarking Survey benchmarked 225 multinational enterprises across 12 industries and 29 countries and jurisdictions.

The 2025 report frames the challenge as rethinking how organizations access and deploy the best talent wherever it may be, while maintaining control and enhancing compliance. In practical terms, that means mobility teams are being pulled into decisions that used to sit in separate lanes: project staffing, hybrid work policy, payroll, immigration, reward, and the tax consequences of work done across borders.

The old office model is still giving way to more flexible paths

In 2021, KPMG’s Global Mobility Forecast called 2020 the year life and work went virtual overnight. By 2022, KPMG’s Work from Anywhere material described remote working as embedded in many organizations’ operating models after the pandemic. In July 2023, Current trends in remote working described the ability to work from anywhere as having transformed the traditional office-based model.

That is the backdrop for the non-traditional mobility models now gaining traction. Instead of treating mobility as a one-way international assignment, firms are increasingly using remote work arrangements, project-based deployment, and flexible location policies to move capability rather than just people. KPMG’s August 2024 webcast summary on generative AI described AI as significantly transforming global mobility, not only improving day-to-day efficiency but also redefining strategic outcomes.

For professionals inside KPMG, the work is widening. Mobility now intersects with tax compliance, immigration, payroll, reward design, and how leaders decide which work has to move physically and which can be delivered from anywhere. That creates demand for people who can bridge technical rules and real operating constraints, not just process forms and track assignments.

ROI has become the new pressure test

KPMG India said demonstrating ROI is now the number one challenge for mobility leaders, overtaking cost. Cost control still matters, but mobility programs are now being judged on whether they create measurable business value, speed up deployment, support growth, and improve employee experience without creating avoidable risk.

The 2025 report says forward-focused mobility leaders are using their “seat at the decision-making table to create additional value.” That is a different job description from the older compliance-first model. It suggests mobility leaders are expected to show up in strategy conversations with data, policy options, and a clear explanation of how talent moves support revenue, delivery, and retention.

For tax and advisory staff, that means the best client conversations are no longer only about assignment letters and days in country. They are about how to design a workforce model that can absorb more remote work, more short-term movement, and more digital coordination without blowing up tax exposure or creating administrative drag.

Where client demand is moving next

A summary on global mobility in Central Asia and the Caucasus described companies there as expanding internationally, competing more aggressively for skilled talent, and needing “more flexible ways to manage their workforce and modern digital solutions.” When growth becomes more cross-border and the talent pool gets tighter, employers start looking for mobility models that are faster, more adaptable, and less dependent on the old expatriate playbook.

The 2024 benchmark survey was built around 225 multinational enterprises across 12 industries and 29 countries and jurisdictions, which points to a mobility agenda shaped by broad corporate demand rather than one sector or one geography. The 2024 survey’s framing, paired with the 2025 report’s focus on uncertainty and technology, shows the function moving from reactive administration toward strategic workforce design.