Recently I had the privilege to spend a couple days with various functional leaders from our Latin America region while visiting Mexico City. While we often, rightfully, focus on our front-line employees, I was also introduced to the complex and ever changing day-to-day dynamics of our Latin America Immigration Team.
When it comes to mobilizing our employees across the complexities of multi border moves, I was amazed to hear that during 2021, this team of four supported over 3,500 cross border immigration demands not just within LATAM, but also globally. In total, our FieldCore immigration team facilitated over 30,000 moves around the globe in 2021!
Often working under extremely tight time constraints, some of these demands require obtaining work permits and/or visas that need to be fulfilled with less than 48 hours’ notice to support our customers. With a focus on excellence and teamwork, they are committed to working closely with the front-line Field Services team to deliver for our customers in support of their outages, while also supporting FieldCore’s cross border technical classroom training, on-the-job training, and complex staff travel.
On top of the normal day to day work they do, COVID-19, restrictive immigration policies proven to be one of the most prevalent themes and headwinds of the last two years. Through the first half of 2022 this team is still in a constant immigration scenario planning mode, working through country restrictions, government backlogs, and rapidly changing immigration laws. For a team focused on immigration fulfillment strategy, a particular challenge has been staying the course and providing the same strategic approach for quick and most importantly, compliant immigration demands. This requires managing acute travel and quarantine restrictions, vaccination requirements, and additional entry documents such as mobility passes and special entry visas. Nevertheless, this team amazingly managed to keep an average response time of less than 24 hours. Most recently, they led a complex effort with our GE and FieldCore finance partners to enable in-house processing of work permits vs utilizing suppliers to improve Quality, Delivery cycle and Cost on top of all else they’re working to manage.
Our global FieldCore immigration team exemplifies what it means to have a true team spirit while serving a greater good. You may never meet any of these incredible folks however, you need to know they are always there, behind the scenes, working tirelessly to ensure the front-line men and women of FieldCore are able to support our customers with dedication, compliance and focus!
Cheers,
Jim
