Today, firms face numerous challenges around designing and implementing successful global mobility programs. From renewed emphasis on employee experience and choice to risk management and cost savings in today’s economic climate, key trends point to ways firms can strengthen global mobility programs. And through each trend, the need for innovation is clear, whether it’s better using advanced technology or evolving into a stronger social enterprise through more robust ESG (“environmental,” “social,” and “governance”) initiatives. 

To stay ahead of the curve and create successful global mobility programs, firms can’t ignore these trends. Discover how Relocity Concierge – our tech-enabled, high-touch solution that delivers destination services in-person and on-demand through our native mobile app – helps organizations navigate these trends to realize time and cost savings, manage global risk, meet talent expectations, innovate, and become better ESG stewards.

1. Realize time and cost savings

Soaring inflation, high interest rates, rising costs of living, a turbulent geopolitical landscape — these market conditions are prompting employers to find new ways to save time and money. A common strategy for weathering such headwinds combines tactics that increase efficiency and reduce expenses.

Expediting processes with automation and leveraging data insights can help firms maximize efficiencies. Historically, technology didn’t exist to help global mobility teams capture data around services rendered and the true costs of relocation and business assignment. Without such data, firms struggled to create realistic budgets, manage corporate housing, and understand the required support for the settling-in process. When employers started using technology, other challenges arose: Pertinent data didn’t live in a central location and was sometimes inaccessible if housed in systems of suppliers and other departments. Relocity Concierge mitigates these issues.

Relocity Concierge’s employer dashboard houses actionable data insights and visibility into the activities of each transferee. Analyzing employee progress throughout the relocation journey helps global mobility teams break cycles of reactive troubleshooting and evolve their policies to better support their mobile talent.

Furthermore, Relocity automates the onboarding process to increase efficiency. Our technology parses information from work orders at the outset so employers and transferees don’t have to answer repetitive questions along in the process.

To generate cost savings for employers, we focus on expediting the home-finding process. While the typical timeline of the rental search process (before move-in) stretches 60-90 days for early browsing, 30-60 days for touring, and 30 days for applications, we achieved the following outcomes during 2022’s peak volumes:

• An average of 67.6 days from first consultation to destination date.
• An average of 13.25 days from arrival to the lease-sign date.
• An average of 12.6 days between the lease-sign date and move-in date.
• An average of 30.9 days for settling-in time, representing the date the transferee moves in through the date we complete settling-in services.

This level of performance allows us to:

• Secure roughly 35% of leases prior to transferee arrival.
• Cut time in temporary housing by up to 60%.

We also lower program costs through delivering our services with our efficient hourly billing model. Unlike competitors who offer fixed half- and full-day packages, Relocity charges clients based only on the hours used for destination services by transferees. Organizations conducting as few as 100+ moves per year can benefit from six-figure cost savings of up to 24%. 

Like cost savings, risk management is top of mind for global mobility professionals.

2. Mitigate global risk

Employee relocation risks transferee disengagement, churn, and physical harm. Insight into the transferee experience explains why. Due to the stress moving creates, the relocation process is a critically important time to engage employees. Current employees are susceptible to productivity decreases if stress levels get too high, while new hires might lose touch with your brand (and even renege on offers) if things don’t go well and you don’t arrange touch points throughout the relocation journey. Stress reduction is so important that six in 10 workers named well-being benefits (like relocation assistance) as a deciding factor when contemplating job changes. Without a doubt, firms must provide wellness benefits to engage and attract top talent.

Talent retention in the context of relocation can be just as tricky as engagement and acquisition. When employers use relocation as part of their broader talent mobility strategy, transferees benefit from career development. However, ironically, firms that don’t provide relocation assistance all the way through the settling-in process and fail to foster productivity throughout the journey risk losing the talent they just worked so hard to satisfy. In fact, Mercer’s 2020 Worldwide Survey of International Assignment Policies and Practices revealed the primary reason for assignment failure is transferees’ inability to adapt to the destination. During relocation, earning employee trust and creating a culture supportive of work-life balance is key to talent retention. 

Additionally, firms must foster productivity before, during, and after relocation to make talent mobility effective. Top employees are skilled, but not always at relocation. Without moving expertise or knowledge about relocation assistance, transferees encounter an overwhelming and unknown to-do list. When activity overload adds to the transferee workload, the resulting stress often reduces employee productivity. While firms anticipate some downtime due to relocation, productivity can further decrease when transferees start jobs without completing the moving and settling in process. Duplicated across entire global transferee populations, such an experience can cause significant employee downtime and lower business results. 

To avoid these negative outcomes, employers must prioritize relocation assistance and provide the support transferees need. To successfully carry out their top priority of retaining top performers, leaders should focus on keeping human capital loyal and productive throughout the relocation process.

Along with mitigating risk associated with talent acquisition, engagement, and retention, firms must eliminate to every possible extent physical harm to transferees, which can jeopardize brand reputations. Duty of Care plays a crucial role in managing risk during employee relocation by ensuring firms safely move transferees to new places.

Relocity Relocation Consultants help mitigate the risk of employee disengagement by guiding transferees through the moving journey and facilitating the completion of tasks. In addition, Relocity Concierge supports overall employee wellness and increases job acceptances by reducing relocation stress. Relocity Concierge keeps relocation programs sticky by engaging current and new hires.

To reduce employee churn, Relocity Concierge tackles the top two high-impact relocation activities that affect work productivity: home-finding and setting up utilities, registering with local authorities like the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Social Security Administration, and more. 

To mitigate the risk of physical harm to transferees, Relocity places Duty of Care at the center of our business model. Our entire team focuses on creating the smoothest transition possible for each transferee — from origin to destination — to ensure safe arrival and support the vital settling-in process. Along with helping firms manage relocation risks, providing Duty of Care allows employers to meet talent expectations.

3. Meet talent expectations

To satisfy talent expectations, employers must meet the unique relocation needs of each employee. Three of the best ways to personalize relocation assistance are giving employees choice and flexibility, enabling a technology-driven and self-service experience, and providing a knowledgeable single point of contact to address specific needs.

Relocity Concierge does all of these things. Our personalized and flexible relocation solution allows mobile talent  to choose their own services in hourly increments. 

Additionally, to facilitate a self-service experience, we work with our partners to build as much of the relocation process into our app as possible. With every critical relocation step within the Relocity app, transferees can complete as much of the journey as they’d like from their mobile devices while on the go. 

Also, working from our app is our team of Relocation Consultants. Unlike competitors, we hire these local experts as employees, not as contractors. Each transferee receives a dedicated Relocation Consultant to serve as the single point of contact throughout the moving process. 

Our approach enables a personalized mobile employee experience that meets talent’s expectations. In fact, in 2022, transferees rated our overall experience 4.95 out of 5 stars. No better way to improve your global mobility program than to make your employees happy! This score reflects not only our amazing team and flexible, self-service experience, but also our innovation of streamlining the otherwise disjointed relocation process.

4. Innovate

Streamlining the relocation process with innovative technology is a huge opportunity for firms to improve their global mobility programs. The relocation experience is often disjointed due to old-fashioned practices, so mobile employees — especially international transferees — are usually expected to navigate complex systems and processes, which can be overwhelming.

Relocity is helping global mobility teams push digital transformation with our Concierge solution, which facilitates a smooth, intuitive relocation process. As discussed above, transferees complete each step of the relocation process in our app, which is powered by our workforce mobility platform. Our AI-powered platform is the single source of truth for firms and their transferees, with dashboards for each party. The employee dashboard functions as a self-service portal that:

• Enables virtual connection between transferees and Relocation Consultants. 
• Walks transferees through each step of the relocation process — so they know exactly what to do as they settle in and prepare for day one on the job.

Corporate mobility teams and their RMC’s can use our portal dashboard to see real-time data insights about their transferees – the services they’re using, milestones achieved, and more. This type of data helps ensure that you can evolve your policies to best support your mobile talent, whether they are executives, candidates, highly-valued employees, or interns.

Relocity Concierge’s ability to connect all transferees to Relocation Consultants across the world and enable tasks to be completed seamlessly, both virtually and in-person enables our clients to make strides toward corporate ESG objectives, which is another opportunity for improving global mobility programs.

5. Master ESG

ESG is increasingly important to employees, especially your younger talent.

Environmental: The global mobility industry isn’t environmentally sustainable by nature, but has great potential to change through digital relocation assistance and eco-friendly partnerships.

Relocity is committed to creating a more environmentally sustainable relocation experience. By investing in and scaling our app to support virtual area tours, virtual home searches, and virtual consultation meetings, we’ve reduced travel times by 50% over traditional destination services providers. In addition, our Relocation Consultants make sustainable recommendations, connecting transferees to partners like Trünk that provide recycled and reusable packing materials.

In 2022, we saved approximately 6,400 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. We’ve doubled our emission savings every year and expect to do it again in 2023. 

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR 2022 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT.

Social: The social aspect of ESG encompasses firms’ broader impact on society. Employers must recognize social equity as a lasting trend that greatly impacts employee experience and adjust their global mobility programs accordingly. Forming Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) strategies and objectives is a good place to start. 

DEI plays a critical role in:

• Expanding global workforces through diversity-focused talent acquisition.
• Diversifying the talent pool through internal talent mobility. 

By supporting all types of mobile employees and personalizing the relocation experience to each individual, Relocity helps employers close gender and race disparities among new-hires and transferees. We do this by matching our local host employees to transferees based on demographics and interests, enabling us to find new neighborhoods where transferees can thrive. In the end, our approach helps HR and global mobility teams:

• Overcome DEI challenges.
• Create inclusive global mobility policies and provide equitable relocation assistance companywide.
• Promote diverse, inclusive cultures and support corporate DEI objectives.

Governance: Employees (especially those in younger generations) have high expectations around corporate governance. In fact, according to an Ernst & Young’s Center for Board Matters brief, Gen Zers “...stand up to corporations that they perceive as unfair, unjust or unethical.” Firms must govern their global mobility programs well to impress young talent and improve business outcomes.

Good governance, in the context of global mobility, means:

• Managing risk through Duty of Care.
• Working with socially responsible partners.

As previously discussed, Relocity places Duty of Care at the center of our business model. Additionally, through our in-app marketplace, we recommend reputable partners for home-finding, commuting, and other services. These are two key ways we foster transferee trust in clients’ global mobility programs, and ultimately meet talent expectations.

The roadmap to an enhanced global mobility program

In today's rapidly evolving landscape, firms must enhance their global mobility programs to stay competitive. The key trends of a challenging economic environment, flexible policies, digital transformation, and ESG highlight the importance of creating efficient and effective global mobility programs.

Relocity Concierge helps employers respond to these trends by:

• Providing time and cost savings through improved program visibility to minimize reactive troubleshooting, automated onboarding, reduction in time spent in temporary housing, and hourly billing.
• Enabling risk management through transferee engagement, retention, and safeguards.
• Creating a relocation experience that meets transferee expectations.
• Replacing antiquated global mobility practices with an innovative solution that streamlines the relocation process.
• Supporting corporate ESG objectives. 

By partnering with Relocity, employers can enhance their global mobility programs and achieve business goals.

Learn more about Relocity Concierge.