When people hear end-to-end assignment management, they often picture the most visible parts of an assignment: mobilizing an employee, getting them to the new location, helping them settle in, and managing logistics while they’re on assignment. 

Those moments may feel like the whole assignment but in reality, they represent only a small portion of what determines whether an assignment is successful, compliant, and worth the investment. The most critical tasks happen well before the move begins, and long after the assignee returns home. 

What’s often overlooked is the work that bookends the move itself.  

Before an assignee ever moves, decisions are being made about assignment structure, duration, cost assumptions, immigration strategy, tax treatment, and policy application- many of which are difficult or expensive to change once the assignment is underway. 

After the assignment ends, the stakes remain high. Repatriation, role placement, and career progression directly influence whether the organization retains the talent it invested in or quietly absorbs the cost of attrition. 

In an end-to-end model, those surrounding phases aren’t treated as background work or administrative prerequisites. This is where many of the most important outcomes are shaped. Decisions made early in the process set the tone for cost control, compliance, and support throughout the entire assignment. Likewise, what happens after the assignment concludes often determines whether the organization realizes the full value of its investment or absorbs hidden costs through turnover, unplanned extensions, or lost institutional knowledge. 

Most mobility teams understand the value of managing assignments this way, yet many struggle to operate end-to-end in practice. The challenge isn’t a lack of intent or expertise, it’s the way mobility programs have evolved over time. Responsibilities are often split across functions, vendors are engaged at different stages, and data lives in separate systems that don’t naturally connect. Add to that lean team structures, growing regulatory complexity, and increasing pressure to move faster, it becomes difficult to step back and manage the assignment as a single, cohesive lifecycle. 

Recurring challenges in global assignments

• Unrealistic cost projections driven by early assumptions that don’t account for assignment duration changes, tax exposure, or downstream benefits costs. 
• Reactive immigration planning, leading to start-date slippage, interim workarounds, or compliance risk.
• Misalignment between assignment policy and business needs, resulting in ad hoc exceptions and inconsistent employee treatment.
• Lack of visibility into total assignment cost, with expenses spread across departments, vendors, and cost centers
• Underplanned repatriation, leading to role uncertainty and disengagement.

When programs do break out of this pattern, assignments become more intentional from the start, with clearer alignment between business goals, cost expectations, and perhaps most importantly, employee experience.  

Fewer issues surface mid-assignment because decisions are made with downstream impact in mind. Mobility teams gain better visibility across the entire lifecycle, which allows them to manage assignments proactively rather than constantly triaging issues, having to piece together what happened from forwarded emails and scheduling yet another cross-departmental meeting. 

This is where the right external partner can make a meaningful difference. An RMC with assignment expertise doesn’t just support individual moves, it helps connect the dots across the full assignment lifecycle. By bringing perspective from handling thousands of assignments, experienced partners can anticipate where programs typically break down, bring a broader perspective to early decisions and provide continuity across stages that are often managed in silos. 

End-to-end assignment management isn’t about doing more, it’s about seeing more. When assignments are managed as a connected lifecycle rather than a series of isolated steps, organizations gain greater control over cost, risk, and outcomes, while creating a more consistent experience for employees. 

The move is just the middle- what happens before and after is what defines assignment success.