21 Aug What If the Answer Isn’t Moving Workers But Moving Jobs?

For decades, global mobility has been built around a straightforward premise: when talent and opportunity are in different places, move the talent.

A company needs an engineer in California, a finance executive in Singapore or a project leader in London, so the employee relocates. Global mobility helps make that movement possible, managing everything from immigration and housing to compensation, family support and compliance.

But a provocative idea in the OECD Employment Outlook 2026 suggests that workforce strategy may need a second option: instead of always moving people to jobs, perhaps organizations should sometimes move jobs to people.

That does not make global mobility less important. It could make it much broader.

The limits of moving everyone to opportunity

The OECD finds striking differences in employment opportunities within countries. In more than half of OECD economies, employment rates between smaller regions vary by more than 20 percentage points. Yet relatively few workers actually move from low-employment regions to places offering better opportunities.

There are practical reasons.

Housing availability and cost can make relocation financially difficult. Childcare, a spouse’s career, local services, professional licensing and the portability of benefits can all determine whether an apparently attractive career opportunity is realistically movable. The OECD identifies precisely these issues as structural barriers to geographic mobility.

The report therefore argues for a combination of “moving people to jobs and moving jobs to people.”

This is particularly relevant for global mobility because organizations are confronting the same question on an international scale.

Finding the right employee no longer automatically answers the next question: Where should that employee work?

Technology is separating talent from location

The geography of work has already become more flexible.

The OECD’s earlier paper on offshoring, reshoring and the evolving geography of jobs noted that remote work demonstrated that many jobs could theoretically be performed from almost anywhere.

That possibility is now becoming part of workforce strategy.

KPMG describes remote work as a core operating model for many global organizations, giving companies access to talent across borders while simultaneously creating tax, immigration, payroll and permanent-establishment questions that traditional assignment programs were not designed to manage.

Meanwhile, Mercer’s work on distributed workforces has explicitly discussed the rediscovery of moving jobs to people, alongside virtual mobility and geographically distributed teams.

The implication is significant. A company facing a skills shortage may have more choices than relocate, expatriate or recruit locally.

It might create a regional hub. It might establish a remote position. A role could become hybrid or project-based. A team might be distributed across several countries. Or an employee might travel temporarily to a project rather than permanently relocate to it.

Mobility becomes less about moving everybody and more about determining which work truly requires physical movement.

Geography still matters

None of this means location is becoming irrelevant. Quite the opposite.

Some jobs depend on factories, laboratories, hospitals, construction projects, customer sites or physical infrastructure. Face-to-face collaboration can matter enormously. Regulations may also require employees to work within particular jurisdictions.

And economic activity still clusters geographically.

The OECD therefore recommends place-based strategies that build jobs around existing regional strengths. Its 2026 report points to Canada’s development of AI ecosystems as one example: investments can be concentrated where research institutions, talent and industries already create the foundations for growth.

The lesson for employers is similar: workforce planning can begin with both talent and place, rather than assuming one must automatically follow the other.

Global mobility becomes a location strategist

This could represent one of the more interesting evolutions of the mobility function.

KPMG’s latest Global Mobility Benchmarking Report finds mobility leaders under increasing pressure to demonstrate business value and align their programs with broader organizational strategy.

Moving jobs toward talent gives mobility an opportunity to do exactly that.

Before approving a relocation, organizations could ask:

Does this employee actually need to move? Could the position move instead? Could the assignment be shorter? Could a regional hub serve the business? Could several people rotate through the location?

And when relocation is the best solution, mobility can focus resources on making that move successful.

That distinction matters because moving jobs to people will never eliminate employee mobility. Companies will continue opening markets, transferring expertise, developing future leaders and sending employees to locations where their physical presence creates value.

Instead, organizations may increasingly operate with a portfolio of options: permanent relocation, temporary assignments, project travel, commuter arrangements, remote work, distributed teams and regional talent hubs.

For global mobility professionals, that may ultimately expand the mission.

The future may not simply be about moving people around the world.

It may be about helping companies decide where people, jobs and opportunity should meet.