Louise Jones – Head of Global Mobility at DLA Piper

We’ve had the privilege of having Ms Louise Jones, Head of Global Mobility at DLA Piper.  DLA Piper is a global law firm with offices in more than 40 countries throughout Africa, the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East, positioning it to help companies with their legal needs anywhere in the world.

Ms Jones has been working for DLA Piper for almost 5 years and has over 8 years of experience in Global Mobility. Learn more from Ms Jones’s experiences in her full interview below.   

Q: Can you give us a brief description of your role in DLA Piper?

My role is to lead the Global Mobility team and function, which supports all cross-border mobility activity across our global network.

Click & Like on LinkedIn

Q: Has DLA Piper’s range of services influenced the way you process global mobility in the company?

We strive to be the leading global business law firm by delivering quality and value to our clients, wherever they operate.  Mobility is really key to achieving this goal.  For example, over the past 6 months we have launched 2 new mobility programs, with the aim to encourage a greater number of secondments across our global network.  Our mobility philosophy is really based around global integration and personal and professional development.

Q: What kind of developments have you seen in the global mobility industry recently?

Any Mobility professional will agree that Mobility is an extremely changeable environment to work in and we see many developments, which shape our industry year on year.  The next 12-24 months in the mobility industry, are likely to be exemplified by change, predominantly due to current political and economic transformations.

One change, which has really been given allot of air time within our industry over past few years, is "Talent Mobility".  I personally have and continue to see a rise in the desire for international travel, to be experienced within careers.  This appetite for international experience, really changes the face of mobility in a number of ways including an increase in flexible allowances, the need for greater pipeline and talent planning and of course the need for cost saving (given increased number of global assignments).

Q: What kind of technology do you use to monitor the HR and global mobility activities in your company?

We are actually going to be conducting an RFP for a new mobility tool in the next 6 months.

Q: What advice would you give to someone looking to build a career in HR and global mobility?

I have been exceptionally lucky in my mobility career to date, which started when I was an expatriate myself and worked for IBM in Budapest.  I quickly learnt that you have to be extremely organised and also quite resilient, to survive in the mobility industry.  Mobility is very specialist, and therefore we generally have to work ourselves up from the bottom to the top as well as taking advantage of the many great mobility forums out there, which offer specific mobility training courses.