Global mobility risk can no longer be an HR afterthought

Canadian employers are being pressed from two directions on global mobility. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is transferring employer compliance inspections under the International Mobility Program (IMP) to Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) as part of a more constrained regulatory environment, while geopolitical instability continues to expand the legal and operational risks attached to deploying workers across borders. The moment demands a shift many organizations have been slow to make: treating global mobility not as an administrative function, but as a strategic risk priority, says Jack Kim, Partner at global immigration law firm Fragomen in Toronto.

Kim advises organizations from major multinationals to non-profits on immigration and global mobility strategy. He says the foundation of any defensible mobility risk framework starts with an information problem.

"You cannot do anything without good data, and not only collecting data or information, but transforming that into actionable intelligence," says Kim. “With that, then you can start to strategize.”

Knowing where employees are deployed, what compliance obligations attach to each jurisdiction, and what geopolitical risks are active is only useful if it translates into decisions, he says. Kim describes organizations with credible mobility functions as those using intelligence to ask hard questions about specific locations in real time and positioning their advisors to respond.

HR’s move from operational support to strategic planning

The internal credibility challenge is just as real. The 2026 Global Mobility Survey, published by the Canadian Employee Relocation Council (CERC) and drawing on responsed from organizations across finance, natural resources, and transportation, found that while HR manages 50 per cent of corporate mobility programs, the majority of those teams' time remains concentrated on operational tasks and compliance management rather than strategic workforce planning. The gap between how much responsibility HR holds and how strategically it operates is exactly the dynamic Kim refers to.

"If people think that all you're doing is paper pushing applications here and there and not adding strategic value, then that perception will stand until you get something in front of them," he says.

Changing that takes persistence. The regulatory environment – including concerns over how global mobility could help close Canada's productivity and innovation gap – is giving mobility leaders more material to work with, and Ottawa's proposals to streamline Express Entry and IMP compliance oversight means the conversation about mobility risk is moving up the agenda.

Building a pipeline that can weather uncertainty

Lara Dyer, Chief Executive Officer of Talent Beyond Boundaries Canada in Ottawa, connects skilled displaced workers and refugees with Canadian employers through the Government of Canada's Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot (EMPP). She says the companies managing the current immigration environment best have built redundancy into their talent pipelines rather than relying on a single pathway.

The approach comes down to diversification of supply, according to Dyer.

"The companies that are doing this well are looking at hiring domestic talent, working with colleges and universities to recruit new grads, and building a career pipeline for them internally," Dyer says. "And then looking at a combination of temporary foreign talent through programs like the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which is designed for that, but also having a component where you're looking at what proportion of your workforce do you want to bring in permanently and really have them stay as part of your company long-term."

She believes that having a strategy that includes these options means organizations can weather the uncertainty better.

The case for that diversification is intensifying. Canada's flattening population is already reshaping how HR leaders approach recruitment and talent strategy, with Statistics Canada data showing the population rising only slightly in the first two quarters of 2026 after declining in the fourth quarter of 2025. In healthcare, skilled trades, and other constrained sectors, the domestic labour supply shortfall is not a risk down the line – it’s a concern now, according to Dyer.

"If you know you're going to be opening a long-term care home in, let's say, 2028, don't wait until 2027 to start planning for that,” she says. “You need to plan for that international recruitment right away."

The strategic case comes before the assignment

For Kim, the most fundamental question in global mobility is rarely asked explicitly enough.

"The number one question is why, why you are doing this," he says. "Some companies do this because of just simple business need – we lost somebody here and a person in the UK can fill this spot, so we're just going to send this person – and that's a very reactive way to think about things."

By contrast, strategically-minded organizations treat international assignments as a deliberate leadership development pipeline – requiring, for example, that every C-suite candidate have had international posting experience, says Kim. Cultural dynamics also factor in: parachuting someone into a foreign entity without working through local expectations first compounds the risk of an already expensive move.

"Would this individual be willing to move to another country? Will it be a success? What does success look like to you? These are all questions that are answered beforehand, as opposed to thinking reactively to it," Kim says.

An overlooked talent pool

One area where strategic planning opens doors that compliance-first approaches tend to miss is displaced and refugee talent, according to Dyer. As her organization works to bridge that gap, she says she regularly encounters the same misconception.

"One of the myths that I'll dispel is that immigrants are taking our jobs," she says. "The reality is that newcomers take up a lot of the roles that Canadians are not interested in for whatever reason," she says. “I encourage employers to hire domestically as much as they can, but even if they do, we know that in certain sectors and in certain regions of Canada, they'll still need to look internationally, so there's lots of room for optimism and looking at international recruitment as a positive benefit for an organization.”

Dyer says that her organization is currently running hiring missions in markets many Canadian employers haven’t previously considered, including an active project in Kenya, where strong training programs and English as the language of instruction create a viable candidate pipeline. The stakes for workers in this process are significant, she says. "It's always disappointing when you don't get the job that you've applied for, but when that job would allow you to immigrate to Canada and leave a refugee camp situation, it's devastating," says Dyer. Managing that responsibly – through language bridging and orientation to the Canadian work environment – is central to the mobility model her organization supports, she adds.

A protection plan for workers in a dangerous world

One of the reasons there’s displaced talent for Dyer’s organization to help is global volatility, which creates additional risk for organizations with talent moving internationally. Organizations need to know where their people are, and HR can be central to this type of planning – which can include evacuation plans and locations where people can safely travel to in the event of crisis where they’re working, says Kim.

“[Conflict is] increasingly happening due to the world we live in at this point, and the more sophisticated companies are thinking about this – there are companies spread across the world that have their own crisis management groups,” he says. “Try to be proactive about these things, increasing visibility within your own companies, having policies in place, game planning, and crisis control too, because more often than not – as we've seen with the wars going on in the Middle East and in Ukraine – there's some more strategic planning that needs to be done, you cannot be reactive anymore.”

Kim and Dyer agree that the organizations that will navigate what’s coming – tighter compliance, rising geopolitical risk, and a shrinking domestic labour pool – are those already asking the questions both experts put to their clients every day: Why are we moving this person? Who else should we be considering? And what is the plan when something goes wrong?

This article is part of our Monthly Spotlight series, which in October focuses on global mobility. Full coverage can be found here.