WorkFlex SOS wins EMMA Award 2026

We're delighted to announce that WorkFlex SOS has won the 2026 EMMA Award. The Forum for Expatriate Management (FEM) named us winner of the Outstanding Agility & Crisis Management as a Service Provider category. The awards were presented on 15 October 2026 as part of the FEM EMEA Summit at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London.

The EMMAs (Expatriate Management and Mobility Awards) celebrate the best projects and initiatives in global mobility across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In our category, WorkFlex SOS was shortlisted alongside Fragomen, SilverDoor and Vialto.

WorkFlex SOS: proven in an eventful year

When a situation abroad escalates without warning, every minute counts. Employers have a duty of care towards their travelling employees, and they need to act fast. WorkFlex SOS combines real-time travel risk monitoring with 24/7 emergency support, built into the compliance workflows employees already go through for every trip. Duty of care and travel compliance, on one platform. And our 24/7 hotline answers in under two minutes.

When the Iran conflict escalated into a regional crisis on a Saturday evening, our clients in a high-traffic travel corridor were suddenly affected all at once. This was the test for the SOS team, and we passed. We were there for every single affected client, maintaining a continuous presence across every case. That truly resonated with people. We must never lose sight of the human element. At its core, WorkFlex SOS is about something remarkably simple: being there, giving people a sense of security, and never leaving our clients to handle the burden of care alone.

Maximilian Goulnik, WorkFlex SOS Lead

WorkFlex SOS was put to the test early in the year, during the 2026 Middle East crisis. After the escalation on 28 February 2026, airspace closed and travellers across the Gulf were left stranded. Official lines were jammed. Ours weren't. Many requests came from clients who did not yet know WorkFlex SOS. One client spent almost an hour unable to get through to a public emergency line, most likely because it was so overloaded, and was especially grateful that our assistance team answered and acted straight away. The WorkFlex SOS team supported our clients proactively, pragmatically and with empathy: more than 500 clients were informed within five minutes, over 70 WhatsApp support groups ran in parallel, the team monitored 14 destinations at the same time, and evacuation plans were discussed for more than 400 travellers.

Further crisis responses included the major wildfires in France, travel disruption in the Middle East and the earthquake in Colombia. Every case was resolved successfully, from start-ups to large enterprises, and client feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

What makes the difference:

• One platform, high client adoption: the right data is the foundation for a fast response.

• Agile, cross-functional teams: backed by assistance staff with direct access to every WorkFlex team.

• Mobilise first, no approval loops: teams are on standby before anyone knows whether they'll be needed.

• Our own pool of experts: more than 150 in-house experts, including leading specialists in cross-border compliance and visas.

A third consecutive EMMA

The 2026 award is WorkFlex's third EMMA in three consecutive years, and our first in the crisis management category. In 2024, BioNTech & WorkFlex won Best Partnership Between a Corporate Organization and a Service Provider. In 2025, WorkFlex and Deel took home Best Partnership Between Two Service Providers. Back in 2023, the WorkFlex Solution was Highly Commended in Most Innovative Use of Technology in Global Mobility (Bespoke Solutions).

Being recognised by the global mobility community for our crisis management means a lot to us. It validates our approach: when you know who is travelling where and with what documentation, you can act in minutes, not days, when crisis strikes.

Patrick Koch, Co-Founder of WorkFlex

About WorkFlex

WorkFlex is an end-to-end SaaS platform that automates HR compliance for cross-border work, from business trips and assignments to workations and visas. It handles the full process and the risk assessment behind it: A1 certificates and CoCs, posted-worker notifications, permanent establishment risk, international SOS support, the Posted Workers Directive, social security and data protection, and generates all required documents automatically. AI-powered risk assessments, country-specific guides, a full audit trail and integrations with HR tools such as SAP and Personio make compliant global mobility possible at the click of a button.

Pictured, from left: Tom Crosby, Brock Dale, Frank Jura and Nathan Clarke of WorkFlex.