Start with the basics by asking the right questions
Why are you moving your employees, and what are the primary goals of your program? How do various types of moves and their corresponding assistance levels support your overall business goals and objectives? Does your approach to employee relocation reflect your company brand, including supporting your diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) priorities, and your corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives? How will you measure and report on your program’s success, and does that include some way to gauge the employee experience?
Once you’ve identified your relocation program’s “North Star,” plotting the course for how you’ll get there – and identifying the right partner to help you – will depend on such key variables as:
- Your relocation volume, and your employee population: How many employees do you anticipate moving per year? Does this population include both homeowners and renters? How many are moving on their own, and how many are accompanied by family members, including children?
- Your origin and destination locations: Will you be moving employees domestically and globally? Are your employees going to/from locations in which your company has permanent establishments, are you exploring new markets, or is it a combination of both scenarios?
- Your industry sector and company culture: Are you sending teams on short-term, project-based assignments, or permanently transferring individuals to new regions, or to localize in a new country? Is employee mobility part of your recruiting and leadership development pipeline for early or mid-career associates?
- Your program budget: All the above elements will influence the level of investment needed to make your program a success. Understanding the true costs also includes elements like performance metrics, on-time completions, and employee satisfaction scores. You need a partner who can easily and transparently report on all of them.
- Your interactions with suppliers: Will you require the RMC to use your suppliers? If so, an RMC may charge additional fees when going outside their preferred supplier network.
That may seem like a lot of questions, but it pays off to design a mobility program that delivers what you need. Gathering the right data and keeping the focus on the primary business objectives of your mobility strategy will help you design a program that best meets your organization’s – and your employees’ - needs.