The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted almost every industry and organization. As organizations that operate across national borders, multinational enterprises have been particularly impacted by the pandemic. Drawing insights from ongoing research on the role of HR in responding to the crisis and also on the role of learning and development in enabling the post-COVID workforce this session will reflect on what the pandemic means for global talent management and global mobility. It will provide some key thoughts on the directions which future research in this space could evolve to better understand these important phenomena.

Professor David Collings is Professor of HRM at Dublin City University Business School in Ireland where he is co-director of the Leadership and Talent Institute. He was due to be James M. Flaherty Visiting Professor at the Beedie School at Simon Fraser University this summer but his visit has been postponed owing to current circumstances. Prior to joining DCU, he held faculty positions at the University of Sheffield, and the National University of Ireland, Galway. He has been a visiting Fulbright Scholar at Cornell University and has also held visiting positions at King’s College London and Nanyang Business School in Singapore. He is a leading international expert on the future of work with a particular focus on talent management and global mobility. His work focuses on how organizations can develop more strategic approaches to managing talent and delivering sustainable performance. He is a regular speaker at corporate events and his recent speaking and consulting engagements include organizations such as the Abbott, Abbvie, the Danish Confederation of Industry, EADS Airbus, GE, Medtronic, Novartis and Stryker. He has been named as one of the most influential thinkers in the field of HR on four occasions by HR Magazine. He has published numerous papers in leading international outlets including Harvard Business, and eleven books and his work is regularly cited in media and other outlets.

Moderator: Marion Festing, professor of human resource management and intercultural leadership at ESCP Business School, Berlin, Germany.