Movements or ‘mobilities’ are an important part of the employee experience, with implications for workers’ identities and well-being. But given that movement can look very different in different work contexts, how can HR better address it through its practices and policies?

Movements and mobilities in working lives

In a recent article commenting on management research, myself and Dawn Chow argued that while we talk a lot about where and when people work, we probably don’t think enough about the patterns of movement that link time, space and place in defining working lives. 

Mobility is typically linked to HR, particularly international HR, in terms of global mobility services, supporting the relocating and transferring of employees across borders and locations to complete assignments. There is also talent mobility, or enabling employees to move across an organisation into new positions.

Sometimes, a ‘space’ only becomes a ‘place’ if people become attached to it through meaningful activities

However, since the 1990s, ‘mobilities’ research has argued for a much broader and systematic investigation into the role of movement in our lives and societies. 

In a post-pandemic world of work and HR, this emphasis has relevance for altered commuting patterns, so-called digital nomads using special visas to work remotely from different countries, and the many ‘deskless’ frontline workers on the move (2.7 billion people, 80% of the global workforce).

Work and HR on the move

Much attention in the world of work is still focused on places of work; usually an office or home. But what if we were to think of work and the employee experience as a patchwork of locations and journeys made meaningful by movements?

It’s not hard to outline examples of work arrangements characterised by movements between home, office, co-working spaces, client sites and other hubs, departments, venues or countries. In turn, this will also involve experiences with transportation routes and virtual technological interactions.

The movement of people (plus ideas and objects) represents a geography and timetable surrounding working lives. It has implications for workplace power dynamics, identities and practices. Mobility decisions affect employee experiences in terms of cost, time, health, family, leisure, and career considerations.

HR can capture this reality better to the extent it moves away from thinking of the employee experience as only embedded in a limited set of fixed places – rooms, buildings, going from A to B and back. 

In reality, there are many important examples of distinctive mobility employee personas or ‘figures of mobility’ represented in workforces – migrant workers, disabled workers, global leaders, gig workers, and transport workers, among others.

Staying still or always moving?

Two opposing work mobility extremes are represented by (1) sedentarism, a stable habit and routine of being still and confined to a single place over time, and (2) nomadism, a more cyclical and frequent pattern of movements between places, with more uncertainty and less stability. 

However, for most of us, working lives involve a more complicated mix of the two – with associated feelings of stopping, starting, stillness, movement, feeling stuck, and so on. 

what most people are likely seeking is a humane balance between secure attachment to some fixed places or roots

For example, drivers are often still or sedentary for long periods, while enabling movement for themselves, their vehicles, cargo and/or passengers. Logistics and delivery workers are highly mobile and nomadic along supply routes, while recipients stay still as goods or services are brought to them.

Patterns of being still and on the move are fundamental to an employee’s motivations and identities because they affect what it means to be ‘at work’ and what they might expect to be doing at different times and in different places.

Does a space give a sense of place?

How employees experience working in and moving through different spaces and places is highly subjective, but we can probably all think of places we have hated or felt uncomfortable being in – such as a busy airport or a soulless, isolated office area.

Sometimes, a ‘space’ only becomes a ‘place’ if people become attached to it through meaningful activities and routines. Some critics have become concerned that many modern globalised spaces have become more like ‘non-places’ – highly anonymous, generic and impersonal.

Common examples of potential non-places include airports, hotels, shopping malls, casinos, theme parks, and motorways. Staff and other workers and consumers move around in and through non-places, and they may be functional, efficient and convenient enough.

However, given the links between built environments and well-being, risks of poor mental health, disengagement and alienation remain concerns in places where people may feel dehumanised and disoriented from the constant flow of transient people. Virtual online spaces may suffer from similar problems.

Movement across networks of places

In organisations, social network analysis is often used to map out crucial patterns of people and connections between them. However, there is under-explored potential in doing the same for networks of places that employees move between as part of their experiences of work.

Beyond home and office, people can spend time moving around and occupying a variety of other ‘third places’ associated with recreation, community, religion and other social contexts. 

Mapping out the employee experience as a network of interconnected places, journeys and destinations allows for a richer understanding of relationships between them. 

For example, people might have stopping-off places or retreats, places they visit more/less regularly, trips between places more local or distant, and shifting patterns of technological connections and platform usage. 

Conclusion: Implications of mobilities for HR

A mobilities perspective can show us how much is at stake for the employee experience in a world on the move, particularly a post-pandemic world of varying flexible, dynamic, hybrid and frontline/deskless work contexts.

Three useful mobility levers for HR are (1) balancing sedentarism with nomadism in work, (2) mitigating the risk of negative experiences associated with ‘non-places’, and (3) understanding how employees experience movement as flowing across a network of places.

Keeping this in mind, HR could do more to address mobilities by:

• Embedding it in existing processes relating to the employee experience – such as engagement measurement, learning and development, rewards/benefits, well-being and equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI).
• Tailoring mobility interventions and offerings differently for both hybrid/remote and frontline/deskless workers, where experiences of movement at work may be profoundly different.
• Promoting flexibility and sustainability benefits of improving mobility experiences, while developing an employer brand that recognises and celebrates that we all have different mobility preferences, needs and circumstances. 

Ultimately, what most people are likely seeking is a humane balance between secure attachment to some fixed places or roots, and some freedom or adventure associated with positive opportunities for mobility.